VIEWFORTH High School has been left in a Catch-22 situation by Fife Council, parents have said.
According to parents the school is not attracting enough pupils due to the inadequate building.
But Council bosses have said unless more pupils attend, there is a possibility a new school wont be built.
The fight was taken to the chairman of the education committee, councillor Douglas Chapman, on Tuesday evening in a meeting involving parents of pupils at Viewforth as well feeder primary schools.
In 2005, Viewforth was put in the top three of a priority list of school buildings in Fife. However, between September and October last year, that list was changed, and Viewforth went to the bottom. Now, work is only due to begin in 2018 if housing developers move into the area and contribute.
Parents told The Press this week that the decision not to build due to the small number of pupils - currently around 350 - has made them feel the Councils think their children are less valuable than pupils elsewhere in Fife.
Janice Bain, chairman of the Parent Teacher Council at Viewforth, said: "Fife Council is holding us in a Catch-22 situation.
''People don't want to come to the school because it's older, but the justification for not building us a new school is that we haven't got enough pupils.
''How can we win in that situation? It's no fault of the pupils that they attend a smaller school."
Parents agreed that Viewforth has many positive attributes, and made it clear the issue was not with their education, but with facilities and opportunities open to them.
Walter Baird, who has two children at the school, said the Council is not looking at the full issue – even without new homes in the area there would still be hundreds of pupils in need of a new school.
He added: "It was never about only 350 pupils. People seem to think this is a Viewforth issue, but it's not - it's a Kirkcaldy issue.
''Saying it is about 350 pupils is misleading and misguided - if you take in the whole catchment area there would be more than 800 pupils attending this school.
"My children are not going to see the benefits of a new building and better facilities. I'm gutted, and I don't know what else we can do."
Campaigners were left with what one parent described as "a glimmer of hope" - a promise from Cllr Chapman that he would look into securing funding from a new government scheme - with the possibility it could be used to move Viewforth forward.
Cllr Chapman said: "It's very early days but it is how we can maybe find a way of delivering this school, or some others, a bit quicker than anticipated.
''I'm very loath to give promises and raise hopes that might be dashed later.
''I'd rather deal with the facts than start to think about making promises that we might not be able to keep - I don't want to fall into the trap made by the previous Labour administration.
"We are working towards getting the best outcome we can. If we can progress that any quicker we will."