Bridgeport schools plan after-school arts program
BRIDGEPORT — City high schools have plans to roll out new and robust after-school arts programs.
A district-wide Afterschool Arts Academy, formally announced later this month, is slated to start in January. The program will run four days per week at Harding High School.
Bridgeport educators told Hearst Connecticut Media that as students return to school buildings and the pandemic wanes, the program’s inaugural season is particularly well-timed.
“There are so many benefits to the arts,” said Sara-Jane Henry, the school district’s performing and visual arts director. “Not only critical thinking and creativity, but social-emotional growth and support.”
The Afterschool Arts Academy will be open to students at Harding, Central, Bassick, Bridgeport Military Academy and Fairchild Wheeler, and could offer theater, dance, choir, drum line and music lessons.
“In suburban communities, parents sign their kids up to do things like this,” said Henry. “Giving my Bridgeport students this opportunity that’s in their city, on their doorsteps, is really motivating.”
Spots will be applicationbased at first, Henry said, to ensure enough disciplinespecific staff to support students.
Henry and others are currently in the process of interviewing staff to work each of the arts, connecting with local organizations to bring in visiting artists based on student interest, and promoting family participation.
In some ways, the jump to a district-wide interdisciplinary academy is not as big as it may seem. Bassick already has a small theater program, “and it’s popular, so we’re going to expand that to make it district wide,” said Henry.
A small group of students at Harding, too, formed a high school drum line that she said would be scaled up.
In the long term, Henry said, she hopes to build some of these programs up to early college after-school courses to earn higher education credits.
Harding has also offered several other arts programs since it moved into its new building in 2018, which has state-of-the-art facilities that include an impressive auditorium, a Mac lab where students create digital music, a photography and video classroom, and a voice-over room. At the school level, local groups and grants, including Connecticut Arts for Learning and the Mary Fitch grant award, have supported Harding’s arts in recent years.
“When I was teaching, we didn’t have those things,” said Kathryn Silver, a longtime visual arts teacher in the district who is currently an assistant principal at Harding. “These are professional-grade equipment.”
The academy is funded by COVID-relief dollars, though administrators are also using other sources to ensure their blueprints are sustainable. The new funding could also mean the return of many arts initiatives cut by the oft cashstrapped district over several years.
“A lot of those elective-area classes have been trimmed because of budget, but we all know it’s those classes that keep our students better connected to school,” said Silver.
“We really believe as a staff here at Harding that it is through the arts that we will help our students and community be able to make sense of COVID and help them process what they’ve experienced and be able to make sense of their world now,” Silver said.
A formal announcement of the program with more information is expected around Thanksgiving.