Fort Pierce Magnet School of the Arts Reviews
ST. LUCIE County — The campus currently known every bit Fort Pierce Magnet School of the Arts has been a fixture on Delaware Avenue longer than most Treasure Coast schools have existed.
The xanthous-brick school has undergone endless renovations, and staved off closure, since opening in 1914 as St. Lucie County's commencement high school.
But the latest transformation planned here will bring something unique to the Treasure Coast.
This autumn, the K-8 school volition reopen as the Creative Arts Academy of St. Lucie, or Bandage, where students will focus on art, music, trip the light fantastic toe, drama and musical theater.
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"When you can integrate arts into other subject areas, it can be a powerful affair for kids," said Marshall Adams, executive director of the A.Due east. Backus Museum in Fort Pierce. "That can help them see things they wouldn't take seen normally."
Unique programs
Cast is one of 3 St. Lucie schools benefiting from a $12.5 meg federal grant awarded to attract students toward underutilized schools by creating unique programs.
Samuel Due south. Gaines Academy and Fort Pierce Westwood High Schoolhouse will feature more courses in STEM fields — science, engineering, engineering and mathematics — in the coming months.
What is coming to Delaware Avenue in a few months, nonetheless, is much different.
CAST students will spend their elementary years exploring art disciplines and learning fundamentals, school officials said. As they progress, students will choose their specific focus, such equally painting or wind instruments.
At any given moment, studies at Cast might exist interrupted by spur-of-the-moment songs, dances or poetry readings led by teachers or outside performers, according to the school district's grant application.
These "random acts of civilization" are a way to get students involved and build their confidence, schoolhouse officials said in the application.
The same goes for the schoolhouse's Communique Café, a flexible cafeteria stage where students will perform a range of compositions in forepart of their peers during lunch.
Fine-arts schools such equally Cast open doors for students to be artistic without the fear of beingness judged, said Julie Ward, primary of Rochelle Schoolhouse of the Arts in Polk County.
"The stigma of doing something different or offbeat is not the same in this environs," Ward explained. "Information technology's much more accepted and cherished."
While there is no St. Lucie County high schoolhouse of the arts, educators say the skills honed in kindergarten through eighth-class transfer regardless of what students study.
Dedication, commitment
It takes dedication and commitment, for instance, to stay in a theater plan that hosts ii full productions a year, including lights and sound, said Brian Kier, primary of Davenport School of the Arts in Polk County.
Kier has seen this first-hand over the past 18 years.
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He is the simply principal Davenport has known since it was reinvented equally a K-viii arts schoolhouse almost 20 years ago. At the time, information technology was a low-performing campus that was falling apart, Kier said.
Switching to an arts focus helped the school grow from 500 students to 1,100 with a waiting list of about 1,500, Kier said.
St. Lucie County is aiming for a similar issue. The school district pursued the magnet grant, in part, to bring diverse students from across the canton to the Fort Pierce campus, which had space to grow.
The grant volition build a trip the light fantastic studio and theater on the campus, school officials said. Classrooms volition exist remodeled for art programs and the auditorium volition get new audio and lighting equipment.
Enrollment is projected to abound from 442 students to about 600 over the next three years, school officials predict.
"It may take (the St. Lucie community) a while to effigy out what a great thing they have," Kier said. "We had to grow our civilization."
Involving the community has been a priority for school officials before the curtain rises on Cast.
CAST and the A.E. Backus Museum, for example, are creating fourth-grade lessons on the Highwaymen, black Florida artists who became famous for selling landscape paintings of idealistic Florida locales.
Performers and artists from the museum, Indian River State Higher, Sunrise Theatre and the Fort Pierce Jazz Society will mentor students through an Artists in Residence program, according to the district's grant proposal.
Then far, reactions to the transformation to Bandage have been positive, said Jane Whitaker, commune magnet-school coordinator.
The application period for CAST began in March and runs through the summer, Whitaker said.
The school will be open up only to St. Lucie residents, school officials said. Students will be chosen for CAST through a random lottery to ensure economic diversity. Sibling preference and proximity to the campus won't exist considered in the pick process.
"People are excited to see what this schoolhouse is going to become," Whitaker said.
Source: https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/education/st-lucie-county-schools/2018/05/09/oldest-school-st-lucie-county-reopening-arts-school/368232002/
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