Heart of the Arts from p14 cabinets and floors and the courtyard next to the cafeteria, we envisioned a small theater in the former choir room and a drawing class- room in the old homemaking room; we began planning how to turn the auditorium with its balcony into a usable theater with a light booth and dressing rooms.” Following Booker T.’s commencement of operations, arts magnet schools started to pop up in other major cities through the rest of the late ’70s, and that led to the creation of the non-profit Arts School Network in 1981, Price says. “A network was created and the Booker T. staff was there at the beginning of that art network; we were one of the founding schools for that and it’s still going strong to this day,” she says. “That was a way for us to always sort of feel like sister schools, like we have a reciprocity program. If one of our kids, say their dad’s job moves to Washing- ton, D.C., then [the Duke Ellington School for the Arts] without audition will allow our students to enroll. When Hurricane Katrina happened, we were able to take the [New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts] kids.” It took time for the diversity of Booker T.’s student body to grow following its reopening. A lawsuit filed in 1970 in federal court by Sam Tasby against DISD showed that school dis- tricts like Dallas were not meeting legal re- quirements for desegregation. U.S. District Judge Barefoot Sanders, who oversaw the case for most of his long career on the bench, ruled in 2003 that the district achieved “unitary status” in “closing the achievement gap” even as then-Superinten- dent Dr. Mike Moses noted in his testimony that “much remains to be done,” according to court filings. DISD has a middle school named in Tasby’s honor. “It’s changed exponentially in the last eight years,” Price says, referring to her time as a teacher at Booker T. Washington. “The year I came in, in the senior class, there were zero Black boys. There was one junior and he left. So the next senior class didn’t have one either, and my son’s class had four. I was determined that we would hold onto these four and have more every year after that and every year, that number has gone up.” Rudes says the school and the district re- main committed to programs that help them seek out “students who have talent, drive and passions in the various sectors of our city who may not have been immersed in the arts.” Booker T. Washington High School’s cur- 16 16 riculum consists of four artistic “conservato- ries”: theater, visual arts, music and dance in addition to academic studies. Students who wish to attend the school must have at least a 75 percent cumulative grade point average or 80 percent for students from the district’s gifted and talented or science and engineer- ing schools. All DISD magnet schools also require students to place in a certain percen- tile on the State of Texas Assessments of Ac- ademic Readiness (STAAR) or the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests depend- ing upon the student’s grade level and school, according to the district’s website. Students who pass those bars participate in “in-person assessments” and must prove resi- dency. DISD tried to crack down on students who filed false residency records in response to reports of rampant abuses of the rule in 2020 that included a tip hotline to weed out students who weren’t living in the district. Thirty percent of the students are se- lected based on overall scores, and the other 70 percent go through the district’s feeder pattern guidelines based on student popula- tions with con- siderations given to siblings of cur- rent or graduated students “who [attend] the same Vanguard, mag- net Montessori or Academy pro- gram,” according to the guidelines. Rudes says “I have to remind myself they are teenagers. As you’re watching them, it’s easy to forget they’re 13 or 14 years old .... and then the school re- ceives strong, continuous sup- port from the district and the school’s advi- sory board, the latter of which has been able to raise millions in private donations for supplies, programs, renovation projects and expansions to its historic headquarters. The school boasts impressive numbers for stu- dent scholarships that reached as high as $78 million for a single graduating class. “It’s pretty magical,” says Kate Walker, the someone will say something funny and you remember.” – Kate Walker, dance conservatory director and later founded Eyecon Studios with Jeff Garrison, now paints and restores multistory murals all over the city and country, with works at the Southwest Airlines corporate headquarters and Walt Disney World resorts in Orlando. One of his first Dallas murals cov- ered the side of a parking garage located across the street from Booker T. He says the things he learned from his art edu- cation at Booker T. showed him more than just how to hold and use a paintbrush: They taught him and other stu- dents like him how to be an art- ist. “The staff at the school were all incredibly high school’s dance conservatory director. “These kids are incredibly talented and keep me on my A-game. I learned pretty quick that I can’t rest on my laurels in the same way I don’t expect them to. It’s helped me grow a lot as an instructor. The level of instruction and talent is through the roof. I have to re- mind myself they are teenagers. As you’re watching them, it’s easy to forget they’re 13 or 14 years old .... and then someone will say something funny and you remember.” Artist Chris Arnold, who graduated from Booker T.’s visual arts conservatory in 1984 talented professionals and were willing to give of their time. They brought in their peers and fellow artists to help teach the kids in a nurtur- ing environment,” Arnold says. “There were super passionate and really cared about edu- cating the kids, and their passion rubbed off on us and definitely fired us up. The school itself by its nature is a magnet school, so it draws people in and you have to be really on point and passionate about what you do to be in that school.” An education with a strong focus on fos- tering and teaching the art and exploration of expression doesn’t just have application to students’ technical abilities to become singers, actors, dancers or artists. Many of the school’s staff members note that lessons in those areas can also teach skills like focus, problem solving, confidence and determina- tion that apply to a wide variety of ventures and careers. Dressmaking in a theater and sewing class. Kathy Tran “That level of discipline translates really well into any career path,” Walker says. “I see lots of students pave their own way whether it’s as artists or not. They are leaders.” The school already has a long and im- pressive list of names of people who work in front of and behind the scenes in show busi- ness, but they also include names like Ford Motor Co. chief designer Earl Lucas, civil and labor attorney Tammy Wood of the Bell Nunnally law firm of Dallas and WinCo Foods’ corporate communications director Noah Fleisher. “You’re becoming empowered to be your own artist, to learn how you function as an artist,” Price says. “What is my per- sonal process? These four years helps you figure that out, and once you move beyond this space and someone throws a project at you, you go into your systems that you de- veloped in these four years and it just makes putting things together just so much easier. You know the best way for yourself because you’ve had a chance to try it many ways in collaboration by yourself and once you’ve got that, you can apply it to any- thing.” Smith wrote that Baker’s educational philosophy believed “every student is cre- ative and that creativity applies to all areas of the student’s life; therefore, every student should try every aspect of theater.” Arts magnets school like Booker T. Washington High School don’t just create artists. Badu says Booker T. brings out the artistic and expressive vision that’s already there. “That creativity and expressing myself in my style kind of opened me up with every other artform,” Badu says. “The freedom of those halls, it was a whole new world for as the artist in me was awakening.” MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2014 MARCH 31–APRIL 6, 2022 DALLAS OBSERVER | CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | MOVIES | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | SCHUTZE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS | DALLAS OBSERVER CLASSIFIED | MUSIC | DISH | CULTURE | UNFAIR PARK | CONTENTS dallasobserver.comdallasobserver.com
