TAMPA, Fla. — The Hillsborough County School Board voted Tuesday to close Just Elementary School, a majority-minority school along coveted property near the Hillsborough River in West Tampa.
The vote came in a 4-3 decision for the school board, which according to documents from Hillsborough County Public Schools, the district wants to close Just Elementary on Spruce Street and send students to Booker T. Washington and Tampa Bay Boulevard elementary schools.
"Whenever you have to move children, it does create a disruption, but we were at a point of crisis to be able to serve 284 students that really needed us immediately, to be able to transition them to five schools to have better academic services and exposure to highly qualified teachers," Superintendent Addison Davis said after the vote passed. "The vacancies we have at Just were just one of the links that we had to be able to fill."
Davis said it was clear from the meeting where over 50 people from the West Tampa community spoke in favor of keeping Just Elementary open, that there's a true point where the community wants to band together to help children. He committed to helping the community should they struggle through the process.
"We will go to work tomorrow, maybe later tonight to be able to identify key players to be able to move towards a direction where we create an advisory council to be able to identify what's working, what's not, and what we can do differently for Just Elementary in the future," Davis said.
Students, parents and community advocates argued the district should've given Just Elementary more time, saying the board never had a meeting with parents before the proposal was put on the table and more resources should've been allocated so children would have access to a high education in their own neighborhood.
"I'm just so upset. I feel like they should've given our kids a chance," Monica Moreno said. "I stay in a low-income area. I stay where we need that school right there because the majority of the kids walk there."
She's a mother of three from West Tampa with two kids old enough to be in the school system. With tears in her eyes, she said the board's decision leaves her in limbo without being able to spend money out of pocket for extra transportation to take her kids to school.
"I have to separate my kids," Moreno said. "I might not even put him, my little one, in school. I don't know what to do."
Back in April, superintendent Addison Davis said moving students to the other two C-rated schools will put them in front of more highly-qualified teachers.
Just Elementary School was an F-rated school and the vote to close it down raised concerns of gentrification.
10 Investigates found long before board members approved the plan of closing Just Elementary School from Hillsborough County Superintendent Addison Davis, a 2015 redevelopment plan from the Tampa Housing Authority and the City of Tampa foreshadowed the school would eventually be gone.
"These schools, Stewart and Blake, are on the river, just like Just," CEO of Project LINK in West Tampa Tina Young said. "Developers want this land, and they will do anything to take it."
The West River Master Plan shows how the City of Tampa, the Tampa Housing Authority, Hillsborough County and Hillsborough County Public Schools all own 120 acres of connected land along the Hillsborough River.
The plan calls for all four of the government agencies to work together to reconfigure the area and open the area for residential and commercial development.
Four Hillsborough County schools, including Just Elementary, are one of the plan’s focal points.
10 Tampa Bay's Emerald Morrow contributed to this report.