TAMPA, Fla. — When the Hillsborough County Public Schools board voted 4-3 in April to close Just Elementary in West Tampa, outrage overflowed into the community.
However, 10 Investigates found long before board members approved the plan 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. A map showing future buildout of the area shows Just gone and a new K-8 school nearby.
“West River, with its four public schools – Blake High School, Stewart Middle Magnet School, Just Elementary and Dunbar Elementary is unique in Tampa given that it is a favorably located neighborhood whose developable land is almost entirely owned by four local governmental agencies…who have joined hands to revitalize and redevelop the neighborhood to accommodate a broad mix of incomes and supporting commercial uses particularly in light of its excellent locational attributes and string housing demand,” the West River Master Plan reads.
"Our community is completely being gentrified,” the president of the Hillsborough NAACP, Yvette Lewis, said. “We're slowly seeing our community...the African-American community, deplete."
The West River Master Plan has not been mentioned in any of the district’s conversations on closing Just. When Davis brought the proposal before the school board to close Just and send students to Booker T. Washington and Tampa Bay Boulevard elementary schools, he cited poor performance, declining enrollment and understaffing.
"We can't recruit individuals to this school to serve children, and that's a disservice to children," Davis said during an April 18 school board meeting.
But parents, former students and community supporters say they want to see the district work harder to keep just open.
“You don’t remove Ernest E. Just school,” former student and community activist Michelle B. Patty said. “You make it better.”
School board members who voted to close Just said keeping it open is too risky.
“Look at the data,” board member Dr. Stacy Hahn said. “This school is in—these kids are in crisis.”
Just, which is 82 percent Black and 12 percent Hispanic has an F-rating and only about 60 percent of the staff it needs. Davis said there are a concerning amount of teacher vacancies. Other school board members cited financial concerns.
“We cannot keep tiny schools open when we’re not getting funding at the state level,” board chair Nadia Combs said.
Between the 2014-2015 school year and 2019-2020, Just’s enrollment dropped from 546 to 273.
However, the West River Master Plan, which was the catalyst for the relocation of about 2,000 residents in Tampa Housing Authority’s now-demolished North Boulevard Homes, played a role in the population shift. Many of the children in that development attended the school.
Former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, who placed a major emphasis on the revitalization of Tampa’s urban core during a time it struggled, said in 2017 the West River Master Plan will help transform the city. Six years later, Tampa is currently one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation.
"It will take a very dangerous, dilapidated and antiquated public housing project and replace it, and to give those residents an opportunity to have a better quality of life than they enjoy currently," he said in 2017 of the West River Master Plan. “It will create a development that is focused on the waterfront that is mixed-use, that is activating an area that has long been abandoned, and I think will change the face of West Tampa in a positive way.”
Some who work in the area and others who’ve called it home are fearful of what’s next. Tina Young, who’s served students for more than 20 years through Project LINK, was moved from the Just Full Service Center portable next to the school that offered wraparound services for students in the community.
"The Full Service Center was a resource," she said. "And the resource has been taken away."
Project LINK has been a partner with Hillsborough County for more than 30 years. The group offers a range of support services for students and families from therapy to health services.
Emails show the school district notified her in 2021 that she would be moving. A spokesperson said the portable sat on land next door that the city owned, and the city asked it to be moved. A City of Tampa staffer said the school district did not ask to renew its lease.
“I'm not sure what's next, but I know that we are resilient and we aren't going anywhere,” she said. “It may not be at this site, but we will still provide services for these children and all the kids that go to school in Hillsborough County.”
Like Young, neighbors in West Tampa have long sensed change coming.
“What they're saying is, 'we're changing the neighborhood and making it more attractive to live,' but it's all about the dollar,” Ron Pressley told Emerald Morrow in 2017. He lived in West Tampa for years, but has since moved out of the area.
“It’s all about the river,” he said then. “The river is gold.”
Emerald Morrow is an investigative reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. Like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter. You can also email her at emorrow@10tampabay.com.