West Ashley Public Schools Have A Glaring DeficitIn Visual Art Teachers
Local parents and art lovers are fed up with the tiny visual arts offerings at West Ashley High School. The school currently has no visual arts teachers on staff and is advertising for only a half-time arts teacher position for the coming school year.
Compare that with Wando High School, which has seven full time visual arts teachers while having a student population only two-and-a-half times greater. WAHS student population is just more than 1,600 students, and Wando has just less than 4,000, according to school district statistics.
According to those same stats, Wando dedicates nearly 10 percent of its entire faculty allocation to provide fine arts instruction, which includes additional courses like photography, sculpture and the like.
By comparison, Stall and West Ashley high schools, the districts next-largest high schools, dedicate 10 percent and 7 percent, respectively, of their teacher allocations toward the arts.
WAHS parent Steve Bailey, who just retired as an art teacher at Summerville High after 36 years in the classroom, is concerned that his son won’t have the chance to study art like students at Summerville will have.
Summerville High, with close to 3,200 students will have five total fine arts teachers come this fall, whereas a part-time teacher will only be able to teach 60 kids at a time, total, at WAHS, by Bailey’s figuring.
“I’d like to see all students be able to take two, three art classes, just to open them up to learning how else to express themselves,” says Bailey.
Bailey argues that some research has shown that up to 20 percent of all jobs are “arts-related,” and says that shorting the visual arts program, kids in WAHS are getting shorted, too.
His wife Anna recalls how their second WAHS student son was able to take part in art club for a semester last year, loved it, and then it was gone the next semester.
She says she understands the school had to make cuts last year, and that one of those cuts included a veteran arts teacher who’d already retired once in the past.
But still, the ratio of art instruction to students at her kids’ schools compared to other schools alarms her, says Anna Bailey.
The couple sent a letter to the district, asking to have two, if not three full-time arts positions at WAHS. They wrote, in part: “WAHS has been a good school for our sons and has an excellent principal. It does
offer other strong arts programs in drama, band, and orchestra. However, we are very concerned with the deep cuts to the visual art program.”
When asked if the district values arts education more in Mt. Pleasant than it does in West Ashley, school district spokesperson Andy Pruitt responded: “The District places a high value on art across the county, and staff members are looking at how to improve and grow the District’s overall arts program.”
Mrs. Bailey says was she shocked to find out while doing research for her letter to the district that St. Johns High, which is one-fifth the enrollment of WAHS, has more arts teachers.
When asked about what could be done at WAHS regarding the arts staffing situation, Pruitt responded: “… principals are responsible for establishing a balanced program of studies at their schools and opportunities that are offered to all of their students.
“The principal decides how much of the school’s budget and teacher allocations will go toward core subjects, career and technology education, fine arts, and other elective courses,” said Pruitt.
That means staffing questions may need to be sent to WAHS principal Lee Runyon instead. And as it turns out, his answers aren’t simple.
Runyon acknowledges the disparity and that it’s his job to set staffing levels. But he paints a picture of a guy over a barrel, faced with cutting arts teachers or core subject teachers from subjects that are tested on a state level, like history or English.
Runyon says he understands Mrs. Bailey’s desire for three teachers, but “unfortunately, our facilities are really only set up for two visual arts teachers, max.”
Runyon, sitting behind a raft of student population and staffing printouts, says that the entire district, and not just WAHS, has been having to adjust to smaller staffs despite the resurgent national economy.
A district shortfall a couple years ago cut into his arts staffing plans, as well as costing the school instructors in other areas, he says.
Runyon says he has been asking the district for some additional flexibility in staffing and student counts. He says he’s just 11 student slots short of being able to add another staffer, and that would go for the arts program.
But, Runyon says, district policy ties his hands until the seventh day of the school year, when enrollment numbers are deemed official, before he can even advertise for the other half of an arts position.
If given more flexibility, Runyon says he can offer more arts programming to not just the Bailey boys, but for kids who attended school at Ashely River Creative Arts Elementary, but weren’t accepted into the highly-selective Charleston County School of the Arts.
Runyon and the district have not always gotten along. Last year, the district advertised his position not long after he refused to use a highly-criticized teacher evaluation tool in his staffing procedures.
School Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait initially tabbed Runyon to a new job in April of last year.
But in April of this year, the job listing was removed from the county’s website and Runyon has since been given a contract as principal at WAHS through the coming school year.
ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST: NECO PINEDA
Last month West Of Free Press held a contest for the design of the next cover story about art in our public schools. The contest was opened to all area students with the only stipulation is that he or she has to be slated to attend a public school in the West Ashley constituent district for the 2018-19 school year.
In the end, the winning entry was 9-year-old Nico Pineda’s stunning “Lowcountry Heron.”
Nico, who will be entering the 5th grade at Ashley River Creative Arts Elementary School, used a mixed media technique that involved sketching the heron with a pencil and then layering tie-die inks, paints, and transparencies. It took him four days to finish the piece, but the end result was well worth it.
Last year Nico placed first in a statewide photography contest and is a member of the Cub Scouts Pack 31 out of West Ashley.
Besides having a pretty sweet portfolio piece, by winning the contest Nico also wins a pizza party for himself and five of his friends and/or family members and an enlarged image of the cover featuring his “Lowcountry Heron.”
