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Posted Jan. 21, 2008
Education
Arts top agenda
at Pawtucket school
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PBN
PHOTO/RYAN T. CONATY
FROM
LEFT: Brittany Hennigan, Antoinette Tamba and Justina Viveiros
attempt to pen lyrics to Handel's "Sarabande" under Scott
Beauregard's instruction, at the Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the
Performing & Visual Arts in Pawtucket.
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By William Hamilton
PBN Staff Writer
Follow principal John Haidemenos Jr. around at the
Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts in
Pawtucket, and it won’t take long to realize it’s no ordinary high
school.
On his rounds one recent morning, Haidemenos checks in
with art teacher Christopher Kane to see if the models are set to
arrive for the next day’s art class – nude models.
“They handle it pretty well,” explains Haidemenos,
referring to his teen students drawing pictures of unclothed people.
“They take their artwork pretty seriously.”
In the hallway, a loud singing voice and accompanying
piano notes waft down the stairwell from the third floor. It can be
heard throughout the school, which is quiet otherwise, but Haidemenos
doesn’t seem to notice as he continues on.
He stops outside a classroom in which students are
watching a black and white movie on a large projection screen. It is a
film studies class. “They saw ‘Psycho’ last week,” Haidemenos says
enthusiastically, referring to the classic Alfred Hitchcock horror
movie.
Yes, this is no ordinary school. In fact, Pawtucket school
administrators say there is no other public high school in the state
quite like the Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
Located inside the century-old Pawtucket Armory on
Exchange Street, it’s a conservatory-like school open only to those
willing to audition or submit an art portfolio. The school’s 70
students each have an artistic specialty – dance, art, theater or music
– that they study rigorously along with traditional academic subjects.
“I’m interested in Broadway,” says Grace Norton, 15, of
Pawtucket, a sophomore. It was her singing that was heard through the
school that recent morning.
She is using a few minutes of free time to review lyrics
of “Over the Rainbow.” She’s playing Dorothy in a local community
theater production of “The Wizard of Oz.”
“If Broadway doesn’t work out, I could always be a music
teacher,” she says.
The school has been open nearly three years, and in many
ways has been a success. Attendance rates are well above 90 percent –
even with the school day being an hour and an half longer than other
Pawtucket schools – and discipline problems are almost nonexistent,
Haidemenos said.
At the same time, there have been difficulties – mostly
having to do with money.
When the school opened in August 2005, it was hoped that
tuition from out-of-town students would help cover costs to run the
school. That hasn’t happened. Right now, only one student lives outside
Pawtucket.
Each budget season, the Pawtucket School Committee,
looking for places to cut spending, casts an eye toward the Walsh
School’s $1 million-plus budget. But Supt. Hans Dellith has been
steadfast in his support of the school, named after a popular local
educator who died of cancer a few years ago.
“The school really does help make this city,” Dellith
says.
It was Dellith who championed the arts high school idea
when in 2000 the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre company proposed using
the empty and dilapidated armory for a center for theater and the arts.
The Pawtucket Armory Association bought the armory from the city for a
dollar, renovated it and leased space to the school and the theater
company.
Longtime Pawtucket art teacher Donna Jeffrey served as the
Walsh School’s coordinator initially, but in a sign of support for the
school, the district hired Haidemenos as principal last fall.
Haidemenos, a part-time jazz pianist, had been a music
teacher and school administrator in Pawtucket for 24 years. Excited
about the school’s future, he talks at length about the fundraising
effort and grants the school has been awarded.
The enthusiasm is paying off. The school already has
received about 75 applications for 28 freshmen slots in the 2008-2009
school year. About a dozen of those applications are from out of town,
including some from Massachusetts.
Eventually, school officials plan to have 120-130 students
enrolled.
While the school offers typical subjects like math,
science and social studies, some course offerings are unorthodox. There
are, for instance, classes on the elements of song writing and comic
illustration.
In the theater room, sophomore Justina Viveiros describes
how she and four other students wrote and produced a play titled “The
Lemon Brigade” that has been performed several times for elementary
school students in the district.
“The little kids are the toughest critics,” chimes in
theater teacher Karen Carpenter, who is an actress at the
Feinstein-Gamm Theatre. “But the play holds the audience’s attention
the whole time.”
In the arts studio, Benjamin Kicic, 16, of Pawtucket puts
the finishing touches on an assignment that had him drawing a four-page
comic pitting Spiderman against the Hulk. Now, he envisions attending a
college like the Rhode Island School of Design when he graduates.
“This school has really opened my eyes,” he says. •
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