Stetson Middle School was neglected for decades, district officials admit. Now, they’re trying to close the school.

As cars whizzed by on B Street, one student banged a drum and another struck a cymbal. Others waved signs and marched in circles.

“Save our school!” the group of about 50 middle schoolers shouted outside Stetson Middle School in Kensington last week. “Save Stetson!”

Stetson is one of 20 schools Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. has proposed closing as part of a $2.8 billion facilities plan. Officials say closures are necessary to improve educational outcomes and equity system-wide, and to balance enrollment in a district that has 70,000 empty seats.

But Stetson isn’t going down without a fight.

The school is 59% occupied, by the district’s calculations, and its building is in “unsatisfactory” condition. Stetson also scored “poor” on program alignment, a measure that takes into account a school’s ability to offer “appropriate spaces” for things like art, music, physical education, and career and technical education.

Its supporters say Stetson has been left to languish and that their neighborhood is overrepresented on the closure list. The district, they say, is taking away a community that’s been a constant for families in a struggling neighborhood at the center of the city’s opioid crisis.

“You tell this community that they are not worth investment,” one Stetson student said at a meeting at the school last week. “How is it equitable to shut a school in a neighborhood that already lost so much? If this building needs repair, fix it for the children, not for the administration.”

The district has said it plans to hold on to the Stetson building and operate it as “swing space” — a building that can be used to relocate students from other schools that must temporarily shut down to accommodate repairs.

Instead of closing soon, the district is proposing phasing Stetson out gradually. The school would stop accepting new fifth graders in 2028, and close in 2030.

Students who previously would have gone to Stetson will go to Cramp and Elkin elementaries, which will grow to accommodate middle grades. Both schools are less than a mile from Stetson.

Officials have also said the move to shut down Stetson is part of a larger strategy of moving away from middle schools and focusing instead on K-8 schools.

Community angst spilled over at the closing meeting last week, with audience members booing district officials who were there to present information and answer questions, and applauding for those who spoke up for Stetson.

If the district has money to spend on fixing up buildings, why not spend on Stetson’s building, students asked.

“We have a fourth floor,” one sixth grader said. “Y’all could just fix that, y’all could fix the pipes, y’all could fix everything.”

Another student said she was frustrated by mold in the school, and a leaky roof.

“I heard that it’s your fault,” the student said.

Later, at a Tuesday City Council hearing, Councilmember Quetcy Lozada told Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. that Stetson staff have put in 12 separate requests to fix the leaking roof.

“That roof is still leaking,” a frustrated Lozada said. “Can I have someone please today commit to going to Stetson and checking their leaking roof?”

Watlington said he would “make that happen.”

The district got the Stetson call wrong, said Kathryn Lajara, a special-education teacher at the school.

“Our school is being penalized for allegedly lacking space — P.E., special education, art,” Lajara said. “These conclusions are based on incomplete and misleading information, not on lived reality of what happens in our building every single day.”

Stetson has an art lab, rooms for piano class, dance, a music room, and a photography room, Lajara said. And it serves 140 students with disabilities, despite the district saying it had inadequate special-education spaces.

Lajara was also frustrated by the district’s upkeep of the building.

“We fight the dripping water every day from the roof that you continue to neglect,” Lajara told district officials at the community meeting.

“I’m going to admit to you: We have neglected this building over decades,” Deputy Superintendent Oz Hill told the audience.

Lajara looked at Hill.

“Instead of continuing to neglect, how about we decide that our community and our students are best to invest in?” she said.

Crystal Pritchett, another Stetson teacher, suggested the district’s decision to send students to Cramp and Elkin was not in tune with neighbors’ wishes about safety and comfort.

Families have safety concerns about sending their kids to other schools, Pritchett said.

“You know nothing about this community,” Pritchett said. “You aren’t listening.”

Stetson opened in 1915 and was a district school for nearly 100 years. It turned into a charter school run by the nonprofit Aspira in 2010, but the district took it back in 2022 after Aspira failed to meet district standards.

Abandoning it altogether is unthinkable, said the Rev. David Orellana, a pastor at CityReach Church in Kensington.

“I don’t think we’re taking into account the negative impact and the void that it’s going to leave behind,” Orellana said. “Taking Stetson away is taking the heartbeat of this community.”