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On Wednesday, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to name the school for the power couple, whose charities have benefitted local children.

City leaders had urged the board to name the school after former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, a Kendall resident.

Still, board member Martin Karp, who sat on the naming committee, said he was pleased the Mournings were chosen.

”They are very deserving of the honor,” he said.

The school’s lengthy new name — the Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High Biscayne Bay Campus — came at the suggestion of a school-district naming committee.

Some community members, however, wanted the school named after Reno, who served as Miami-Dade state attorney before becoming the first female attorney general.

”She is defined as a leader and a role model,” North Miami resident Daisy Black said.

The North Miami City Commission had passed a resolution urging the School Board to choose Reno’s name.

But on Wednesday, School Board Chairman Solomon Stinson said he would not take the commission’s vote into account.

”I don’t think the City of North Miami or any other municipality should tell this board how to name schools,” Stinson said.

Before the vote, more than a dozen community members addressed the School Board, some throwing out entirely new names like Martin Karp Senior High.

North Miami Councilwoman Barbara Kramer’s proposal: Oleta River Senior High.

”The school deserves a name that ties it location to its roots,” Kramer said.

In light of the fuss, board member Agustín Barrera said he wanted to start the process from scratch.

”Somewhere along the line, our process failed,” Barrera said. “The community, from what I see here, is not satisfied with the name.”

But Karp praised the Mournings for their support of the public school system, and called Alonzo Mourning a strong role model.

Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla also supported the name, saying the district procedure had been followed.

”I’m also partial to long names,” Diaz de la Portilla said jokingly.

In the end, the board voted in favor of naming the school after the Mournings.

But the debate caused board members and members of the audience to question the district’s process of naming schools.

Community activist Tangela Sears said the current system pits outstanding individuals against each other.

”We should honor individuals by creating a selection process that is dignified,” she said. “Anything less is a slap in the face.”

In other business, the board:

• Named Walter Harvey, a shareholder at GrayRobinson, the new School Board attorney.

Harvey, a Harvard Law grad, had been nominated for the position at last month’s meeting. But his name raised controversey because he worked at the same law firm as sitting board member Diaz de la Portilla.

Diaz de la Portilla abstained from voting on Harvey’s appointment last month.

But when the item came up again on Thursday, Diaz de la Portilla said he had left GrayRobinson — and presented an opinion from the Florida Commission on Ethics saying he no longer had a conflict of interest.

Diaz de la Portilla cast his vote in favor of Harvey, who he said “has an impeccable resume.”

The three board members who had opposed Harvey — Barrera, Vice Chairwoman Marta Pérez and Perla Tabares Hantman — left the dais together at the time of the vote.

Pérez said she believed Diaz de la Portilla had a conflict of interest and called the vote “a tragedy for our district.”

• Voted to cut 10 days out of the work year for central office administrators and principals, saving the district $5.2 million.

The board also cut the number of work days for hundreds of computer specialists. They will now work 222 days instead of 260.