Public Arts Academy Is OKd

Plans for an arts-oriented elementary and middle school in Santa Ana, down the street from a renowned arts high school, have been resurrected.

Santa Ana Unified School District trustees had previously balked at approving the Orange County Educational Arts Academy, expressing concerns about its funding and lease arrangements, but school organizers convinced trustees Tuesday night that the charter school would be able to sustain itself.

Trustees voted 4 to 0 Tuesday, with one abstention, to issue a three-year charter to the academy, which is scheduled to open in August. The school is expected to serve between 540 and 600 students in kindergarten through eighth grade with a focus on visual and performance arts.

The academy will be in an existing building at 825 N. Broadway and is expected to feed the popular Orange County High School of the Arts, a nearby charter school that draws about 1,300 students countywide.

Charter schools are financed by the state and local districts but are largely autonomous and offer specialized curricula. They must be approved by local school districts, which are financially liable for them.

Academy organizers in 2002 won a two-year charter from the school district and had intended to open the school last year as a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade institution. But the school board revoked the charter in June, expressing doubts about its financial stability. An appeal to the Orange County Board of Education was rejected two months later.

School district officials said they were now willing to support the academy as a K-8 campus.

Key to winning the district’s support was a $6,000 decrease in the school’s monthly lease payment, said Jane Ross Laguna, chairwoman of the school’s five-member board of directors.

But giving the school’s organizers time to hone their pitch also made a difference, said school district board President Audrey Yamagata-Noji.

“In just a year’s time, they’ve been able to do a better job on their application and present a more realistic budget and a more thorough educational program,” Yamagata-Noji said. “When you have to work on anything for a year, it’s going to get better.”

The school district also needed time, Ross Laguna said, to adapt and accept the idea of a new charter school, which would be the district’s sixth.

“They didn’t give us the opportunity before to show how we could do this,” she said. “But [this time] they gave us time to explain why we’re sure these numbers will work. They had time to digest it, ask questions and accept it.”

More information about the academy: (714) 558-ARTS or www.oceaa.org.