A $7.5 million planned donation from Houston's richest couple, Richard and Nancy Kinder, to help rebuild the city's renowned High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in exchange for the unprecedented move of renaming the campus after them set off a fiery debate on the school board.

The gift and how it came about has thrust Houston ISD's new superintendent, Richard Carranza, into his first major political challenge since being hired in mid-August. School board members voiced concerns about private negotiations that took place over the gift, the principle of selling a school name and the fairness to other district campuses.

The naming rights proposal was brought forward by board member Mike Lunceford, who represents the arts high school in its current Montrose location. Carranza pledged to try to ensure a workable deal before the board votes on it Thursday. Board approval was not a certainty after about an hour and a half of intense discussion Monday evening.

"I am committed to working with the trustees and working with staff to finding a path forward, if there's a path forward in this particular situation," Carranza told the board.

Carranza, hired on a unanimous vote by the oft-divided school board, now has a chance to prove he can continue to be a unifying force. At the same time, he has an opportunity to impress the Houston philanthropic and business community, which he promised to court here as he did in his last job leading the San Francisco school district.

According to the proposal before the school board, the $7.5 million gift from the Kinder Foundation is contingent upon renaming the new campus the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. The Kinders declined to comment Tuesday through a spokeswoman.

Selling naming rights for college buildings and high school athletic facilities has become increasingly common nationwide, but the trend hasn't typically included putting donors' names on public elementary and secondary schools.

Costs have increased

The arts high school, commonly called HSPVA, is being rebuilt downtown under the Houston Independent School District's 2012 voter-approved bond measure. The original budget for the new high school was $80 million, the largest per-pupil cost of any of 40 school projects.

An extra $8 million was added to the budget when the board agreed to pour another $211 million into the $1.9 billion bond program to address rising prices in Houston's booming construction market. However, in the spring of this year, district officials said the arts high school project would cost $5 million more to include things such as theater lighting, an appropriate sound system and a specialized dance floor.

That's when leaders of HSPVA Friends, a nonprofit group that helps the school, agreed to launch a fundraising campaign and gained support from the Kinders, said Bob Boblitt, the group's chairman.

The Houston-based Kinder Foundation has given nearly $260 million in gifts and pledges over the last two decades, funding projects such as Rice University's Kinder Institute for Urban Research, major park upgrades and teaching awards. Richard Kinder, a former Enron executive and co-founder of Kinder Morgan, the largest energy infrastructure company in North America, was named the richest Houstonian on Forbes' 2016 list of billionaires with a net worth of $5.4 billion.

School board member Jolanda Jones was the only trustee out of nine Monday to say she would vote against the Kinders' proposal as is.

But four other trustees - Wanda Adams, Diana Davila, Manuel Rodriguez Jr., the board president, and Rhonda Skillern-Jones - expressed concerns, citing poor communication from school district staff about the looming deal. Six votes are needed to approve naming a school after a donor under a policy passed by the board last year.

Naming fight

The debate comes at a sensitive time in the district over school names. The board voted along racial lines earlier this year to rename several campuses that were named after Confederate loyalists.

"Our school names aren't up for sale," Jones, a vocal supporter of eliminating the Confederate monikers, said Monday.

Jones added that she could accept naming part of a school for a donor. However, she said, she was concerned because other district campuses are sorely lacking in resources, including Attucks Middle School.

Davila, who will represent the arts high school expected to open downtown in 2018, said district employees did not keep her informed about the renaming proposal.

"You may not have hired them, but they're yours now," Davila told Carranza on Monday. "Moving forward, you're going to be held responsible for anything that they do."

Meanwhile, a charter school chain in Chicago is one of the few public schools to embrace selling naming rights to donors.

The Noble Network of Charter Schools broke ground in September on a high school named after Joe Mansueto, the CEO of the investment research firm Morningstar, and his wife, Rika. They reportedly donated $17.4 million to build the school.

Faith Boninger, a researcher at the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies commercialism in schools, said public school districts are entering a "slippery slope" if they sell naming rights.

"What happens when McDonald's or Coca-Cola decides to donate $7.5 million? Do they get a school?" she asked.

"I'm afraid we're getting away from considering education a public good that we need to fund as a society."