Jenkins Middle School will close its doors Friday for the rest of the school year after it was found to be structurally unsafe.

Colorado Springs District 11 announced in an email sent Tuesday to families attending the school that it will close by the end of the day Friday after assessments by the Colorado Springs Fire Department and Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control determined it had reached a “critical point” and was in need of fire safety repairs.

Gazette news partner KOAA obtained a letter from the state division Monday that detailed unsafe conditions at the building including cracked walls and structural settlement and shifting among the deficiencies found in December during a fire inspection. As a result, existing fire areas, fire doors and exit corridors have become compromised.

“This is not a decision anyone wanted to make, and we deeply regret the disruption it will cause to our school community,” D-11 Superintendent Michael Gaal wrote in the email. “However, this is a preventative and necessary action to ensure the safety of everyone in the Jenkins community — our students, staff and visitors.”

The school, which opened in 1999 southwest of Austin Bluffs Parkway and Dublin Boulevard, has been subject to freezing, thawing and runoff effects from nearby Cottonwood Creek. Due to the date of the school’s construction, it also lacks many of the current requirements for fire safety in new buildings like sprinkler systems.

Jenkins students and their teachers and staff will relocate to Russell Middle School and Doherty High School — with sixth graders moving to the former and seventh and eighth graders to the latter — as the repairs are made.

School days at the three impacted schools will be canceled Monday through Wednesday next week in preparation of the transition for students. During this time, affected teachers will be compensated and provided moving supplies and transportation to the new locations.

The decision was made to cancel these days in consideration of the cold weather forecast, the holiday weekend and potentially having staff do so on their days off.

“Our staff needs a chance to be able to decompress and prepare for the challenges ahead,” Gaal said at a Tuesday press conference.

Classes at Jenkins will continue for the remainder of the week, with a modified fire watch that’s been in place since the start of the current semester.

“So, there’s been no exposed level of new risk,” Gaal said. “We’ve trained our staff to be able to do that. We’re paying people overtime to walk the building.”

Since being notified in late December, district officials weighed various options to address the likely closure of the school given the amount of time needed to complete an ongoing, independent assessment. These included other locations, modular spaces and possibly reverting to remote instruction while the building is addressed.

The two district schools were ultimately chosen due to their proximity to Jenkins and the available capacity. Russell Middle School is less than four miles from Jenkins while Doherty High School is about two miles away.

The plan is to have dedicated spaces in the new locations to keep the shared student bodies separate and distinct from each other. Still, some staff will have to share classroom space during their planning period to accommodate the incoming students, Gaal said.

Teachers for subjects like art, music and physical education teachers will likely have to travel to both schools throughout the week to continue instructing all their students.

With deferred maintenance needs identified over 10 years ago, D-11 Board of Education President Parth Melpakam said during the conference that the board had set aside $10 million in district funds to address the decaying infrastructure during the 2026-27 school year.

Since the latest fire inspection pushed this timeline up, the board will now use the funds and resources necessary toward a permanent fix.

“This is a situation that we’ve been aware of for a while, but has been proactively taken care of through their facility staff,” said Colorado Springs Fire Chief Randy Royal.

“We’ve been happy with the recommendations that we’ve made, but it really comes down to what … I will call, a sick building getting sicker. So, basically, it’s gotten to the point that the modifications and things that we could do are at a point that they’re not solving the problem.”

The district hopes that the repairs will be completed in time for the start of the 2025-26 school year, but cautions that this could change and will depend on the final building assessment.

A series of community meetings were announced for Tuesday, Thursday and Jan. 22 at Doherty in the email.

Representatives with D-11, CSFD and the state fire division were present to answer community questions at the first meeting Tuesday night. Questions ranged from adjusted bus stops and routes to school-start times to extracurricular activities to the timing of the district addressing the degrading foundation and communicating this with parents and staff.

Kaylee Campanella, whose sister is currently in eighth grade at Jenkins, was one of those in attendance who believed leadership could have communicated the announcement better.

“My sister found out about this just last night on SnapChat,” she said.

In response to these concerns raised by a crowd of often frustrated parents, Gaal pointed to the collaborative work done with the different organizations and waiting until information was finalized before making any announcement.

“We chose to not communicate to our families until we got to a place where we were much closer to that decision, and that communication went out yesterday,” he said.

Additionally, Doherty parent Patti Loper worries that the adjustments will create stress on younger students entering a high school environment and parents that may have to adjust their schedules.

“People have busy lives as it is,” she said. “And now some of them are going to have to go to Doherty and Russell.”

Following the school’s closure, regular updates will be posted on the Jenkins official website.