‘Preserve legacy:’ community rallies to save historic Fessenden, Anthony elementary schools


[Marion County Public Schools]

Home » Education
Posted January 30, 2025 | By Caroline Brauchler
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Community members rallied at a Marion County School Board meeting on Jan. 28 to fight for Fessenden Elementary and Anthony Elementary to remain open as the board debated the fate of both schools and considered alternative uses.   

At a school board work session the week prior, members floated the idea of off-lining Fessenden and Anthony Elementary School and sending students to the nearby Reddick-Collier Elementary, which is only at about half-full capacity. If the school were decommissioned as an educational facility, it would be converted for use as a museum, daycare center, community center, or other resource—but not destroyed.  

The item is not slated for any final decision or action and was not on the Jan. 28 agenda for discussion. The public came as a proactive measure to voice support for the schools before the school board moves further with any alternative options.  

Fessenden Elementary School is registered on the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest continuously operated school in Florida originally established for Black students shortly after the Civil War.  

Originally called Fessenden Academy, the school was founded by a group of freed men fighting for the educational rights of Black Americans, led by Thomas B. Ward.  

Ward’s great-granddaughter Linda Ward is the current PTO president of Fessenden Elementary and one of the passionate speakers who pleaded with the school board to keep the school in use as an educational facility.  

“You’re talking about ripping the hearts out of a family if you go along with trying to close the school,” Ward said. “I want you to go down in the pits of your intestinal fortitude and just say, ‘God, give me the strength to do the right thing.’” 

The school was first founded in 1868 as Fessenden Academy, eventually transitioned into Fessenden High School, and absorbed into Marion County Public Schools in 1951. 

Community members voiced staunch opposition to the site being used as anything other than a school. The school’s history runs deep, and many speakers expressed a desire for their children and grandchildren to be able to attend the school just like they and the generations before them had the honor to do.  

Annie Alexander Harvey, a Fessenden alumna from the Class of 1964, attended the school during segregation.  

“My grandfather, JW McLaughlin and his brother James Budd McLaughlin helped build the administration building in 1909, using those Florida coquina rock that make it so unique,” Alexander Harvey said. “All of this was certainly made possible by funds from the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.” 

Carnegie, the legendary steel tycoon, awarded the school a grant of $6,500 in the early 1900s for the construction of the main building.  

[Marion County Public Schools]

The nearby Anthony Elementary School, also suggested for the chopping block, was one of many schools opened to the public for tours last year to show the disrepair of the school and many needed updates.  

 The school’s historic cafeteria, which has served as a gym, auditorium and more over the years, is one of the oldest buildings standing across any Marion County School. Its beautiful brick walls and floor-to-ceiling arched windows house students every day, but it underwent major renovations a few years ago when the entirety of its wooden floor needed to be removed to in order to save the building.   

James Carter, a former Anthony student, now hosts the Good News Bible Club in the classroom where he once attended third grade in 1955. Carter was one of the many community members who helped to restore the cafeteria.   

“That wood didn’t have to be hauled away, but the people, the community came out and picked up all that rotted wood and took it home as a memory. And that’s how it is in our community with our school,” Carter said.  

The cafeteria at Anthony Elementary School [Caroline Brauchler/Ocala Gazette] 2024.

Carter urged the school board to save the school, not just for its status as a place of learning but as a community hub.  

Due to the rural location of the school, many students and families walk to the school, as they don’t have a car or other mode of transportation, said Anthony’s music teacher Laurie Rangel.  

“We had a mother come with five children, who doesn’t have a car, who walked to one of our school events and brought all five of her kids,” Rangel said. “If you move them to Reddick, she can’t come. She doesn’t have transportation, so then she can no longer be involved in the school that her kids attend.” 

At the close of the meeting, School Board Members Eric Cummings and Nancy Thrower expressed disappointment at the way that the idea of dissolving Fessenden and Anthony was brought up at the work session before allowing the public any notice or input.  

Cummings spoke strongly for keeping both schools as educational institutions, citing willingness for the district to spend the funds for necessary renovations to bring the schools up to a better standard.  

Bishop James David Stockton, former president of the Marion County NAACP, was the last of the public speakers to encourage the board to preserve Fessenden’s history.  

“We’re showing you tonight that we’re proactively passionate about the future of our centers of higher education,” Stockton said. “It’s interesting also to me that all of these schools are in the same district, same community, same area—an area that many talk about having been overlooked and sometimes forgotten because the focus of the development of our county, seemingly, is in other areas.”  

Stockton left the school board with one final message: “We’re emotional tonight, but we’ll be voters tomorrow.” 

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