As these students inaugurated their new school on the day of Obama’s swearing-in, their teachers told them something the president-elect has told the nation: that in this spectacular new building, much more will be expected of them.
Carlee Carvalko and Leyneshka Vazquez (pictured) helped to cut a yellow ribbon at the Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School Tuesday morning, as the school community gathered to celebrate the completion of the soaring new, $70 million school at 177 College St.
Co-op is the 28th school to be built or renovated under the mayor’s $1.5 billion citywide school construction program.
Filling the grand stairway, school administrators joined Co-op’s 446 students for a festive ceremonial group ribbon snip combined with a moment of reflection.
“Something new is emerging in the nation and around the world,” said Co-op’s principal, Dr. Dolores Garcia-Blockier, “and for us too a higher level of artistic achievement is going to be expected, especially here in this new building.”
The new facilities include a professional 350-seat theater, state-of-the-art video production studios, dance studios, choral and instrumental music rehearsal spaces. In them, Co-op students will learn to become more independent, Garcia-Blockier said. “In the past, for example, the kids produced art, and the teachers chose what to hang. With all these spectacular new walls to fill, the kids are going to take the next step: learn to be curators and organize their own shows.”
For juniors Symphony Spell and Derick Pagan (pictured with Blocker), the day meant a new beginning, both in terms of facilities and the spirit.
Derick, a creative writing major, is thrilled that all the classrooms will have the Internet, whereas at Co-op’s old space, on Orange and Bradley streets, what computers were there were broken much of the time. He’ll now instantly be able to check out a line from Leaves of Grass.
“I feel I’m really part of progress now,” he said.
Symphony, a painter and ceramicist, said her dad was in tears today, on the occasion of the presidential inauguration. How is this going to affect Spell’s future as an artist?
“I already feel out in the world, much more respect for me,” she said. “I’m being judged much less, you know, by random people, because of race. That’ll mean I can go farther too.”
Theater major Ashley Novoa, sensing the energy of the moment, rearranged her backpack after security inspection (all high school kids must, alas go through metal detectors upon entering).
“Today is really a day for dreams,” she said. “For me here, it means more and more that I can keep my head up and follow those dreams.” Artistically, she said, with Obama as president, she felt she could be much freer in her art, and with the theater facilities at Co-op, exciting new means are available.
Co-op is an interdistrict magnet high school, designed by Caesar Pelli and built by the Giordano Construction company, with funding largely provided by the state. The building soars with a grand staircase and cathedral, sun-filled spaces that are good for a tanning as well as the human spirit.
Will the new architecture and state-of-the-artness of Co-op make a difference academically for the kids? Schools chief operation officer Will Clark gave a candid reply as the kids moved off to their homerooms, to check out their lockers, and to prepare for the obligatory fire drill.
“Research shows that what makes for achievement are teacher and administrator quality and time on task,” said Clark. “That said, for our kids, many from impoverished backgrounds, yes, this building says, as Dr. Mayo mentioned in his remarks, that we care about them and love them.
“Yet now the torch in a sense is passed to them to use these terrific new facilities. But, yes, I think the psychological effect of these surroundings is very real. And with kids who want careers in film or video, for example, now they have the latest stuff; they’ll be able to launch themselves in jobs from here much more easily. But first the kids have to go to work because the state tests are coming up in just two months.”
“And don’t forget,” said schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo, “the walls are white and clean. We expect them to be that way ten years from now!”
As the visitors left the school, the school day began in earnest. Students in Sally Kaczynski’s theater history class took out their copies of Everyman and Woody Allen’s Death Knocks, the comic’s satiric take on the medieval classic.
In the two-story high theater classroom, with sun pouring in from floor-to-ceiling windows on College Street, they stretched their arms in an actors’ warm-up called reaching for the stars.
Total waist of money and land.