City planning arts-themed middle school

Boston plans to open the city's first arts-themed middle school as soon as the fall of 2008, with a focus on the visual and performing arts.

The school, which school officials expect to have 240 sixth- to eighth-graders admitted by lottery, will incorporate the arts in every class in some way. Students will perform plays in English class, for example, or produce an animated movie to show their understanding of various principles in math, or study the life of a dancer to learn about biology and physiology in science. Each will take classes in voice, dance, instrumental music, and theater.

The school, city and school officials say, will be an attempt to share Boston's abundance of arts with youth and to give its lagging middle schools a boost. Wrapping the arts into academics and giving children the chance to perform can motivate students and keep them in school, the school's designers say.

"It's more than rote learning and memorization for [standardized] tests," said Linda Nathan, co-headmaster of the Boston Arts Academy, the city's performing arts high school, and chairwoman of a task force planning the arts middle school. "It's the notion of developing a skill and practicing. In the arts, you have to take risks and fail because you learn from failure."

Nathan will present the proposal to the School Committee in May. The school, which is being planned by a task force of Boston school officials and members of the arts community, would be one of just a few arts-focused public middle schools in the state, according to a Massachusetts Department of Education spokeswoman.

A charter school in South Hadley is centered on the performing arts, and a Fitchburg middle school integrates arts into its academics, but does not focus on performance.

A location for the Boston school has not been selected, but the Theater District has been mentioned as a possibility during discussions.

Michael Contompasis , Boston school superintendent, stressed that the planning is in the early stage and that the challenge will be agreeing on a location. If the school requires a new building, it may take longer to open the school, he said. "It's a way to reinvigorate opportunities that currently do not exist for middle school-aged youngsters," Contompasis said.

The creation of the school has broad support in the arts community.

"Arts is a language that all of us understand, and it makes learning more fun," said Josiah Spaulding, president and chief executive officer of the Citi Performing Arts Center, who helped start the Boston Arts Academy and supports the start-up of an arts middle school. "We felt we needed to put more of it into the middle school curriculum. These young people are going to be the audiences of the future."

The middle school would be modeled after the Boston Arts Academy, which opened in 1998 and has become one of the city's most sought-after high schools. The high school does not use a lottery, and requires auditions. More than 500 students auditioned for 126 spots in this year's freshmen class.

The students at the new middle school would be groomed to compete for a spot in the arts high school, but would not be guaranteed admission. The school's purpose is not to create an automatic feeder for the arts high school, but to give students earlier exposure to the performing arts, officials said.

"The earlier you can expose kids to arts and music, the better off they will be and the better off the city will be," said John Tobin, a city councilor and chairman of the City Council's education committee. "Not too many kids who play musical instruments or are into acting hang around street corners and get into trouble."

The school, like the Arts Academy, would be developed as a pilot school, which gives district schools more control over staffing, curriculum, and scheduling, similar to freedoms charter schools have.

Students would be required to take courses in all arts disciplines and would have a seven-hour school day, an hour more than in other city middle schools.

Boston's 12,344 middle school students lag behind the statewide averages on MCAS scores, with only about half of the city's eighth-graders scoring proficient in English and less than a quarter in math on the 2006 tests.

Statewide, 74 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in English and 40 percent are proficient in math.

At the Arts Academy, 70 percent of 10th-graders scored proficient on the English MCAS, slightly above state average. Only 48 percent were proficient in math, compared with 67 percent statewide.

The arts high school has a higher attendance rate, lower dropout rate, and lower suspension rate than the citywide averages, according to state data.

Some parents say a performing arts middle school would give students more choice and entice more families to stay in the city. Currently, schools have vastly disparate art offerings, often dependent upon parent fund-raising.

Carol A. DiStefano, who has three children in Boston's elementary, middle, and high schools, including the Arts Academy, said the school would give more children an opportunity to perform and appear on stage.

But Kathy Cahill, who helps raise money for arts at Haley Elementary School, said she's worried that an arts-themed middle school would draw funding and arts staff away from other schools.

"It seems funny to me to think of a middle school specializing in something," Cahill said. "Personally, I'd be a lot happier if the middle schools were more desirable places to send your kids than they currently are."

Nathan said the new school would aim to expand arts offerings at other middle schools. The Arts Academy, which has remained a pilot school, partners with three city schools to teach students string instruments, she said.

"The whole mantra of opening this middle school is more arts," said Nathan, who hopes to start a citywide student dance company based at the new middle school. "In response to No Child Left Behind and MCAS, we've really stripped the arts curriculum bare."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.