Are Rock Hill schools equitably supporting the arts?
Lear year the South Pointe High School orchestra earned an excellent rating – the highest possible honor – at the annual state competition.
This year the orchestra won’t be competing. At seven members, it is one musician short of the minimum number required for competition.
Declining orchestra enrollment prompted three South Pointe students – Scarlett Black, Nathan Howle and Lucy Kirkpatrick – to circulate a petition last year. They wanted to find ways to ensure fine arts programs at Rock Hill’s high schools had the necessary number of students.
They sent a letter to Superintendent of Schools Kelly Pew. The letter also made its way to a committee studying equity among the district’s three high schools, including Northwestern and Rock Hill high schools. South Pointe principal Al Leonard said he asked that students be added to the committee of parents and principals, and he picked Black to represent South Pointe.
The appointment gave Black another chance to lobby for her concerns – and her voice carried weight.
The equity committee recommended that the school board create a middle school arts feeder program so there are equitable fine arts class offerings at the high schools. Each of the five middle schools should offer orchestra and drama in addition to art and band “so that a student is not deprived of the opportunity to enjoy a robust high school art experience.”
“I never imagined it would go this far,” Black said Thursday.
“It shows students can affect what schools do,” Leonard said.
The equity committee’s recommendations ranged from facility improvements to examining the demographic makeup of each high school to a more detailed accounting of school activities costs.
School district officials are reviewing the report, with Pew expected to release a timeline regarding when the district will respond to each recommendation at Monday’s board meeting.
Small numbers
Heather Turner stands before her orchestral students at South Pointe, a violin tucked underneath her chin.
Her orchestra room at South Pointe could accommodate up to 100 musicians or more.
On a recent Thursday she stood before six students, four playing violin and one playing cello. The other member of the orchestra, a cello player, was absent. Black, who played bass in the orchestra last year, can’t this year because she has a scheduling conflict. She was attending an advanced math class.
With just seven musicians it hardly seems fair to call it an orchestra. A small chamber ensemble isn’t accurate either. Turner’s orchestra lacks a middle – the viola – and the bottom – the bass.
She says its hard to find music for the group, and at times it is difficult to offer a “musically gratifying experience.”
Ideally she would like to have 20 members. The most members she has conducted is 25.
In comparison, Rock Hill High has about 25 students each in its chamber and concert orchestras, while Northwestern has 70 students in orchestra.
South Pointe’s numbers are not that low for a lack of trying. Each year Turner posts fliers throughout the school, seeking interested students.
She would like students who know how to read music, but even that can be overcome.
She would like to count on students from middle schools eventually filling out the ranks, but Saluda Trail, which supplies most of South Pointe’s students – dropped its orchestra program about seven years ago when school funding was at it tightest.
When Saluda Trail Principal Brenda Campbell was forced to make cuts, she looked at enrollment data for several years. Orchestra had the smallest number of students.
“So we lost orchestra. Other middle schools lost drama,” she said.
Orchestra programs also were cut at Castle Heights and Sullivan middle schools, said Jim Vining, school board chairman. During the budget discussions Vining said the board told school officials to either eliminate all the orchestra programs or find a way to make it available to any students who wanted it.
While the board did not specify the reductions it wanted, Vining said Friday that eliminating the least popular programs based on enrollment was a good decision to save money.
Since the recession-era budget cuts, the educational focus at Saluda Trail has shifted. The school now focuses on STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts and math. The focus means that when Campbell replaces a teacher, she is more likely to hire someone with STEAM expertise.
That’s not to say that Campbell wouldn’t like an orchestra teacher. But since the program was cut, Campbell said not one parent has asked for its reinstatement.
The idea of creating a feeder system from middle school to high school for any curriculum would be a change for Rock Hill schools.
South Pointe gets most of its students from Saluda Trail. But it also receives students from Rawlinson Road and Sullivan. Rock Hill and Northwestern draw students from all five middle schools.
The science-engineering-math-technology alignment among Oakdale Elementary, Saluda Middle and South Pointe comes close to being a true feeder system in Rock Hill schools.
Rock Hill principal Ozzie Ahl said the current enrollment patterns from middle to high school were designed to maintain a demographic balance among the schools – something the equity committee wants the school district to revisit. Socioeconomic factors were a key consideration in deciding middle school attendance zones and high school attendance zones when South Pointe opened 10 years ago.
The equity committee has asked the school board to reexamine the demographic data to make sure the three high schools are “balanced.”
Other recommendations
Demographic and equitable funding for all school activities got most of the attention during the equity committee meetings and the recent joint meeting with the school board.
South Pointe Principal Leonard said the questions about curriculum equity might not have been discussed in depth without “the eyes of the students. I honestly feel that issues would not have been considered.”
Other equity committee recommendations focused on facilities, an area the school district and school board also have studied.
An equity committee recommendation calls for building a new auditorium at Northwestern and Rock Hill high schools. The current 500-seat auditoriums are not big enough to hold assemblies for the freshman or sophomore classes, which are typically bigger than the junior or senior classes, say high school officials. The only place the entire school can assemble at either Northwestern or Rock Hill is the gym.
The school board and equity committee members separately toured athletic facilities at each high school. One thing they agree on is that bathroom facilities at outdoor fields was “equitably” bad. Some work is being done to address this problem, Ahl said.
District officials have identified $540,000 of athletic facility work, which includes adding or updating bathrooms near sports fields at the three high schools. The district asked the school board to approve the projects last Tuesday and the board could vote on them at its Monday meeting.
Don Worthington: 803-329-4066, @rhherald_donw
Equity recommendations
The recommendations of the Equity Committee studying Rock Hill three high schools:
Curriculum
“Generally uniform” among the schools with South Pointe needing 12 students to offer a class instead of the district’s normal threshold of 15 because of its smaller enrollment.
Because of a disparity in orchestral members at the three high schools the school district should reinstate a feeder program that includes orchestra and drama classes at the district’s five middle schools.
Facilities
Generally well maintained. Capital needs at Northwestern and Rock Hill likely to be greater because the two schools are older than South Pointe. District is addressing some of those needs through its recent $110 million bond referendum and “associated spending plan.”
Consider building larger auditoriums at Northwestern and Rock Hill.
The district relies “to a significant extent” on booster club revenues to maintain and build athletic facilities. “This represents a potential source of inequity.”
Build sufficient outdoor restrooms at the three schools.
Demographics
The district should “immediately commission a thorough analysis of the populations segments within each high school attendance zone.”
Based on a demographic study the district “should undertake whatever action may be required to correct imbalances in the population segments, both demographically and to address trends to overgrowing and use at the respective campuses.”
Access to funding
The district should undertake “whatever efforts may be necessary” to determine “comprehensively and accurately the total costs for student activities at the three high schools, and the revenue available to the schools to cover the costs.
Essential operation cost for student activities should be paid by the district. Booster club and donors should find nonessential operations.
Endorse the accountants’ recommendation to increase athletic funding at Northwestern and Rock Hill by $20,000 each and at South Pointe by $35,000 next year because the district’s support “has been insufficient and has allowed a funding inequity to persist.”
This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 4:37 PM with the headline "Are Rock Hill schools equitably supporting the arts?."