State Backs County’s Arts School to Tune of $221,900

The Orange County High School of the Arts, which got off to a shaky start last September chiefly because of inadequate facilities, has been awarded the largest state grant made to a specialized public high school for the 1988-89 academic year.

The grant of $221,900 from the Department of Education will finance an expanded enrollment and an enriched curriculum at the arts school, and will help finance construction of badly needed dance studios, said Ralph Opacic, the school’s director.

“We’re going to double in size next year to 240 students,” Opacic said Friday, adding that auditions will be held in mid-April. “We will not only have more money for staffing, but we are planning to add a music program.”

The arts school, on the campus of Los Alamitos High School, has 120 students taking courses in musical theater, dance or the visual arts. It will award diplomas to 30 seniors, its first graduates, in June.

The school is the sixth public arts high school in California and is operated by the Los Alamitos Unified School District. It draws students from Orange County and neighboring districts in Long Beach, Norwalk, Cerritos and La Mirada. Admission is based on auditions, as well as interviews, recommendations and academic record.

This year the school has an operating budget of $241,650. However, $101,000 of that went toward construction of an on-campus performing arts center. The $450,000 center, originally scheduled for completion last September, opened in February.

The allocation of resources has been a source of friction among art school staffers who would have preferred to spend less money on the high-tech center and more on basic instructional equipment. And some students have claimed that the program was not sufficiently challenging. In November, Opacic conceded that the school was “scrambling” to provide an enriched curriculum.

“Anytime you start a pilot program, you start small with the intent of expanding,” Los Alamitos school board President Jeannie Flint said Thursday. “And that’s just what we’re doing.”

According to Helen Nespor, the state consultant for specialized secondary schools, the competition for start-up grants to finance specialized programs was especially tough this year. “We received 30 proposals requesting a total of $4.5 million,” she said Thursday from her Sacramento office. “Unfortunately, we have only $2.1 million for these grants.”

Nespor said 12 proposals, selected according to a qualitative rating by a panel of experts, were funded throughout the state. Although the rating determined which proposals to fund, the amount of the grants depended on the needs of each program. The proposal submitted by the Orange County High School of the Arts “did very well, receiving the third-highest rating,” Nespor said. She added that it was awarded the largest grant.

The Anderson Valley Agricultural Institute in Northern California, which submitted the top-rated proposal, received $171,400. The Los Angeles High School of the Arts, which got the second-highest rating, received $160,131.

Opacic said the Orange County arts school plans to build 4,000 square feet of dance studios by next September. “Renovation of existing buildings will begin at the end of June,” he said. “The school district has committed $50,000. And we will use $25,000 from the grant.”

The school will also budget $15,000 for piano accompanists “in all ballet and modern dance classes next year,” Opacic said. “Live music for jazz dance classes will come later.” The lack of live music for dance instruction this year was considered one of the program’s flaws.

In the meantime, school officials are organizing a board of directors for a countywide, nonprofit guild to raise funds for the arts program. “We must be self-sustaining and independent after our third year,” Opacic said, “because we will no longer qualify for state start-up funding.”

The guild would have to raise $200,000 annually, he said.