Keppel principal secures $2M arts education grant

Glendale Unified was recently awarded $2 million to spend through 2018 on arts education at Mark Keppel Visual and Performing Arts Magnet School and its next door neighbor, Toll Middle School.

Keppel Principal Lise Sondergaard wrote the grant last spring and learned in late last month that Glendale Unified was one of 18 winning recipients out of 105 hopefuls seeking money for the arts from the U.S. Department of Education.

“We were very shocked,” she said, adding that Keppel was turned down for a similar grant school officials applied for last year.

In 2010, the school transitioned into an arts magnet school when it tapped into a third of about $7 million that Glendale Unified was awarded to transform Keppel, Edison and Franklin elementary schools into magnet schools, with Edison focusing on technology and Franklin on foreign languages.

Now, four years later and those grant funds expended, Keppel has established its own brand of arts education that the new grant will help strengthen.

“It will really help us to deepen our arts programs to carry our mission even further,” Sondergaard said.

The new grant will let educators bolster the programs that already exist and write new curriculum to share with educators across Glendale Unified, in other school districts or states.

“The point is to have long-term effects on arts education and arts-integrated education,” Sondergaard said.

At Keppel, one goal is to teach academics using the four disciplines of dance, visual arts, theater arts and music.

An example of using art in the academic sense would involve kids creating tableaus to explain certain aspects of the Civil War.

Once while walking the halls, Sondergaard encountered groups of students working on a unique classroom activity — creating dances to illustrate how air flows.

“They were having deep collaborative conversations about air flow using the dance terminology,” she said.

A partner on the $2-million grant is also the Music Center of Los Angeles, which will help write curriculum for teachers at both Keppel and Toll. Also, RISE Educational Services will help train teachers who are instructing students in the arts.

“It’s going to be a lot of work,” Sondergaard said. “It’s going to be fun and interesting and intriguing.”