In 1987 the state Minister for Education, Rodney Cavalier, announced that they would become co-educational and take the names Evatt High School and Maitland High School respectively. The former Boys' High was to be named after the Evatt family, who the minister said was the "finest family that Maitland has produced, arguably the finest family that Australia has produced." This family, Hansard had Cavalier saying, had been "intimately associated with the history of Maitland for a long time."

The statement was not well received in Maitland. By far the best known Evatt there was Herbert Vere ('Doc') Evatt, who was born in East Maitland in 1894 but had left the area for Sydney with his family at the age of ten. He had gone on to highly impressive careers in the law, politics and the United Nations but he never again lived in the Maitland area.

His father and mother lived in Morpeth and East Maitland from 1885 until 1901 and 1904 respectively. Neither became particularly noteworthy or was recognised as a community leader, and they were Maitland residents more briefly than Cavalier seemed to imply. Nor does their association with Maitland's history appear to have been as "intimate" as he suggested.

Little is known of Herbert's seven siblings, all brothers (two of whom died in the Great War), but one (Clive) became a barrister and a state politician. Clive Evatt served for 13 years as a minister in several portfolios including Education. But the case for the family being the finest that Maitland had produced was unconvincing. More relevant to Cavalier's decision, perhaps, 'Doc' Evatt had been a member of the Labor Party's left wing, as was Cavalier. Many Maitlanders concluded that Cavalier was honouring a factional soulmate: using Evatt's family was just a ruse to make it more palatable.

The re-naming of the schools caused uproar. Old Boys especially were outraged, some by the shift to co-education but most by the imposition without consultation of the name of a Labor icon. Tradition, they thought, had been thrown away. For the Girls' High, the loved, tradition-rich badge was rendered inappropriate by the removal of the letter 'G'.

Former students of both schools took political action, and the matter reached Macquarie St. There, Elisabeth Kirkby of the Australian Democrats said in the Legislative Council that changing the names had "caused enormous resentment . . . , particularly among students whose parents and grandparents had attended [the schools]."

Virginia Chadwick, the Liberal leader in the Legislative Council and like Kirkby a Hunter resident, agreed. She called the change to Evatt High School "frivolous, churlish and unworthy [of Cavalier]."

After Labor lost power in 1988, Evatt's name was removed from the Boys' High title by Nick Greiner's Coalition government. The school that had borne it became Maitland High School. Meanwhile the re-naming of the Girls' High as Maitland Grossmann High School after a legendary headmistress was accepted, partly because it facilitated the retention of the long-lived badge with the initials MGHS. The 'G' now stood for 'Grossmann' rather than 'Girls'.