Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, May 30, 2007

May 30, 2007 at 1:10 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:

Meeting adjourned at 2:10 p.m.

Next meeting: Monday, June 4th, at 1:40 p.m. with Lisa DiFranza to wrap up the HOME project.

We discussed space issues, CBHS, and how we can start planning to better use our spaces.

Present:

• Lisa Hicks
• Vicky Stubbs
• Phil Divinsky
• Val Green
• Diane Manzi
• Jane Krasnow

Full Notes (paraphrased):

We decided to leave the HOME project for the moment, distribute surveys to our students, and meet with Lisa DiFranza on Monday for a post-mortem.

We began with an idea of revisiting our timeline, but now with Casco Bay High School here for the next 2 years, we started talking about how we can all coexist in Building A. It’s frustrating that the CBHS task force has recommended that CBHS be here for "the next 2 years" and not "permanently", because it prevents people from investing in building relationships between the schools.

Space issues will be huge. Is there national grant money, so that PATHS and CBHS could, together, apply for a big grant to build an arts wing and a gymnasium for the whole school?

Jill has a connection to Bill Ludwig. This is an important connection. Is it one that could help us find money for such a project?

Next year the CBHS Art teacher wants to apply for a grant with the PATHS Music class to buy drums for doing [therapeutic?] drumming circles on a regular basis. The drums would somehow be stored in a PATHS space so that both CBHS and PATHS would have access to them.

We discussed the first room on the left in the Dance space. Originally, that had been planned for an Arts Academy library space. What’s the benefit of having a library? It seems counterproductive to take all of our individual libraries that we use regularly and move them into another space where we the access would be more difficult. what about using that space as a space for collaborative projects instead?

Lisa mentioned that it would be nice to have equipment in there for duplicating DVDs and for archiving past performances. Valerie mentioned that we, as a cluster, may want to ask GAC for more storage space on the server that Dave B. bought last year, in order to store things like this. Then we could back up the server whenever necessary and burn DVDs of performances whenever we like, from the shared server space.

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing different space issues and CBHS. Generally, the sense was that we should concentrate on being proactive about changing our spaces, thinking about how our programs work together, and deciding what space is necessary and what isn’t.

We absolutely need to have a "space" committee with CBHS to resolve issues in a good way. Both administrations need to support it so that we have equal representation on the committee from both sides. It has been difficult to get CBHS staff to come to the PATHS/CBHS liaison committee.

Next meeting: Monday, with Lisa DiFranza. Bring any surveys and writing prompts.