HAMPTON, Va. – Hampton school officials and the majority of locals believe there’s better uses for school funding than renaming buildings that honor Civil War heroes.

Andrew Shannon believes Davis Middle School and the Campus at Lee – named in honor of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee – are symbols of “bigotry, hatred and divisiveness,” WVEC reports.

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Shannon, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, urged school board members to rename the schools. The board held two recent public meetings at which 10 folks spoke in support of the idea, and 31 opposed the notion, mostly because of the cost associated with new signs and other materials.

“We don’t have a wealth of funding right now,” board member Monica Smith told the news site. “Our citizens said very clearly that they want our funding to be in classrooms, and not on the side of a building.”

“Every person that I talked to did not support changing the names of the schools,” board member Joe Kilgore told WAVY.

Martha Mulger said the board planned to convene a committee to study the possible name changes if the public had supported the idea, but they didn’t. The board ultimately voted in a unanimous decision not to pursue the name changes.

“If the community had come out resoundingly for us to move forward and do that, we would have impaneled a committee to consider names,” Mulger said. “But that is not what we heard from our citizens.”

Student Thomas Perry said he polled his classmates about the name change idea, and they were also not in favor.

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Perry said one student told him that “honestly, I don’t think they should change the name because I like the name of a Confederate leader being the name of a school and having African-American students, teachers, Caucasians, Chinese, Japanese, all learning in that school together,” according to the Daily Press.

“He said it was sort of a kick in the face to his legacy, saying this is what that man stood for, the opposite of what’s happening here,” Perry said.

Numerous locals commended the school on Facebook.

“Thank you! Can we please move on from this stuff already?” David Williams wrote. “Names like Lee and Davis aren’t going to kill anyone, and there’s no reason to keep pandering to the PC crowd. …

“I really wish these people would focus on REAL issues like funding for schools or better classes instead of this.”

“Rebranding with a new name would be an unnecessary expense,” Dynnette Taylor posted.

“Mr. Shannon represents the modern day version of hatred, bigotry and racial division,” Allen Boyd Jr. added.

“And this, folks, is why racism will never end,” Lisa Grasser posted.