Curtain Is About to Fall on State Funding for School

When final exams are over and the Orange County High School of the Arts finishes its third academic year on June 30, the school will face a test of its own: a test of its ability to raise funds.

The state Department of Education has been providing about half the school’s operating money, to the tune of $194,700 the first year, $221,900 the second and $275,000 this year. But those seed grants came with a three-year limit, and on June 30 the ride is over.

The school, on the campus of Los Alamitos High School, will continue to receive a set amount from the city school district for each fully enrolled student. But to make up for the lack of state funding and still maintain its current level of course offerings, executive director Ralph Opacic said, the school must raise about $300,000 a year. There are no tuition charges at the school.

A foundation was established in November, 1988, to come up with ways of finding the money, and a development director was hired last October. A fund-raising campaign started in January of this year; the goal is to raise $95,000 in private and corporate donations by June 30 and an additional $200,000 over the course of the coming school year.

The campaign has raised $30,000 so far, Opacic said, adding that several requests for major donations are still in the “submission stage.” Still, Opacic calls the response so far “tremendous.”

He added, though, that the crucial test in establishing a successful long-term fund-raising effort will be persuading the community that the high school is a “vital, integral part of arts development in Orange County.”

The school, which meets from 2:30 to 5 p.m., opened in 1987 with about 125 students; this year it has 275. About 200 attend full-time, taking their academic classes at Los Alamitos High. The rest attend other high schools during the day and come to the High School of the Arts in the afternoon, or on Sunday to participate in the South Coast Youth Symphony. The school receives no district funds for the part-time students.

Opacic said the school will accept between 350 and 400 students for the coming academic year, which he feels is the maximum with the available facilities and an acceptable teacher-student ratio. Applications are still being accepted; 450 have already been received. Auditions started in March and will continue through May.

If the school falls short of its fund-raising goals, Opacic said, the number of students accepted will not be affected, but the school will have to scale down its course offerings. “We will diminish the scope but maintain the quality,” he said.

Planned facility improvements and curriculum changes have already been funded out of this year’s state grant. These include:

* Expansion of the dance program in September. Classical and modern-dance classes will be augmented by classes in commercial-dance forms--”that’s MTV-type of dancing,” in Opacic’s words. Ray Lozano, an assistant to pop singer Paula Abdul, will head the program; professional choreographers and agents will help students market skills.

* Construction of a new visual arts lab, to give advanced students a place to work on independent projects.

* Construction of a new instrumental music rehearsal room, with storage space for the technical-theater program.

* Addition of portable classrooms, which will allow the return of a musical-theater program that had to move off campus for lack of space.

* Ongoing development of a long-range facility plan, which includes provisions for additional technical-theater work space and extra multi-use rehearsal space.