Arts High School a Good Fit

Santa Ana’s blueprint to spruce up downtown and become a player in Orange County’s arts world in the process has received a welcome boost from the Orange County High School of the Arts.

When the highly regarded school needed more space than was available at its current site in Los Alamitos, Santa Ana came calling with an offer of $1.7 million over the next three years from the city’s redevelopment agency.

The city properly is not just throwing money at the school. It is offering funds if the school finds itself short of money during the beginning years in the new location. If enrollment increases sufficiently, the money may not be needed. The school that has educated singers, dancers and musicians now includes grades nine through 12, with 425 students. It is expected to add grades seven and eight and grow to more than 1,000 students. It will occupy three vacant buildings along Main Street, including the lovely 1922 Mission-style domed building that once was a Christian Science church. The biggest of the trio is a seven-story former Interstate Bank building.

Education in the arts at the high school level also could prove a good fit with the city’s development of an arts complex farther south. Last year Cal State Fullerton agreed to open a satellite campus as part of the Artists Village under development along Broadway and 1st streets. The area has become home to dozens of artists’ galleries and studios, theater companies and a dance troupe. As with the new home of the high school, the downtown area to be populated by artists, once the center of Santa Ana civic and business life, needed renewal.

The Santa Ana school board approved the relocation of the performing arts school on the condition that at least one-fourth of the enrollment be reserved for local students. Currently only 8% of the students are Latino, while most students in Santa Ana schools are Latino.

School officials agreed to the condition and also pledged not to diminish the standards for admission, which now include an audition by prospective students. If keeping the pledge while maintaining standards requires a balancing act, that shouldn’t be difficult for those who teach dancing.