Incubator for the Arts

“This joint is jumpin’,” was the refrain of a buoyant, Broadway-style number that students performed Friday at an event introducing the new downtown Santa Ana campus of the Orange County High School of the Arts.

The joint will be jumpin’ indeed as plans go forward to move the public charter school from its crowded home within Los Alamitos High School to a huge campus of its own by September.

Santa Ana officials have staked a large bet on arts and cultural institutions as engines of urban renewal. Friday’s gathering of educators and politicians celebrated the new partnership between the school and city.

Fronting Main Street between 9th and 11th streets, the complex consists of three now-vacant buildings totaling 120,000 square feet.

The centerpiece is the seven-story former Interstate Bank building, which will house classrooms, art studios, rehearsal halls, a small theater, a cafeteria and school offices.

The former Church of Christ Scientist, a 1922 Mission-style domed sanctuary, will become a 400-seat auditorium for musical performances.

A smaller storefront property between the two other buildings will be a center for technological arts, such as film, video and audio production and computer animation.

The new campus is projected to have as many as 1,050 students in 7th to 12th grades. Current enrollment is 425 in 9th to 12th grades.

The school, which draws students from Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties, will hire 30 to 35 teachers for regular academic subjects, said Ralph Opacic, executive director and principal since the school’s founding in 1987. The part-time faculty of arts professionals could increase from about 60 to 100.

All this won’t be had for a song. The budget for buying, remodeling and equipping the three buildings is $16.2 million, Opacic said.

On Monday, the Santa Ana City Council is expected to vote on a proposal to provide $1.7 million over the next three years through the city’s redevelopment agency. Opacic said the funds will be an as-needed grant to cover possible budget shortfalls during the campus’s start-up years. City money may not be needed if enrollment reaches 1,000, he said.

The school’s annual budget is expected to jump from $1.5 million to $6 million. Opacic said the money will come largely from regular state education funding of about $5,000 per student and from stepped-up fund-raising by the private foundation that supports the school. Plans call for boosting donations from this year’s target of $850,000 to $1 million next year and to $1.6 million annually by 2004-2005.

At Friday’s event, Santa Ana officials hailed what they see as a major boon to the city--and a chance for its youth to shine. A subtext of speeches by Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr., U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) and others was the school’s step from a mostly white, upscale community to the county’s heavily Latino urban hub.

“Thank you for taking the chance,” Sanchez said. “You will realize we have incredible talent. Santa Ana . . . can be an international experience and a model.”

Pulido gently tweaked the city of Los Alamitos, which last year shot down the Los Alamitos school district’s proposal to build a separate campus for the arts high school. The city sued to stop it, citing traffic and environmental concerns.

“We don’t get it, but we’d like to have those bad things here,” Pulido said. “It all makes such beautiful sense . . . education, arts, technology, diversity, tolerance, the future.”

Carol Hart, superintendent of the Los Alamitos Unified School District, bade the school a fond but sad farewell.

“It will be a great loss to all of us. . . . I know you’ll enjoy and treasure this jewel.”

“We will use the arts to make a statement and be a voice for all our children,” Opacic told the gathering. “We now move forward with tremendous excitement.”

Only 12 to 15 students from Santa Ana attend the school now, less than 4% of the student body, Opacic said. On the new campus, at least 25% of the spots will be reserved for applicants from the Santa Ana Unified School District. He foresees a huge leap in applications, not only from Santa Ana but from other communities in central and southern Orange County for whom the new location will be more accessible.

“In Los Alamitos it’s been hard to convince Orange County at large that we’re a countywide program. We’re going to be more visible,” Opacic said.

Part of the school’s mission will be outreach--sending students into Santa Ana elementary schools to help in arts educationand prepare students to qualify for the arts high school’s competitive enrollment, which is decided by talent auditions rather than academic achievement. Students must maintain a C average in their academic subjects to stay at the arts school.

Typically more than 700 students from Orange and neighboring counties have applied for about 100 openings in each entering class at the school. “We’re not lowering our admission standards,” Opacic said.

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Packing Up

The O.C. High School of the Arts is moving from Los Alamitos High School to North Main Street in Santa Ana.

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