Kaya sees song and dance in Cuba, but CUTS Fillmore Arts Center in DC
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| DCPS wants to cut funding and provide an art teacher and music teacher to schools that have students already in trailers because of no space. These schools have no room for an arts program. It's not fair to close Fillmore and the schools then have to settle for art and music wheeled into the classroom on a cart. Also, DCPS is only offering the two teachers and not the proper equipment for a true arts and music program. It takes quite a budget to provide a quality art and music program. With so much focus on testing and data results in schools, students need an opportunity to release their stress and energy in a good arts program. We need to save Fillmore Arts Center! |
Anonymous
Fix the Duke Ellington crazyness, and you may find some art budgets in the future. Don't, and no taxpayer in the city will want to spend a dime more. |
Anonymous
|
Why do people act like Fillmore is the Kennedy Center? Seriously. Good arts educators can work pretty much anywhere. Great teachers can integrate arts into the overall curriculum and leverage time with general classroom teachers and other specials. Think dance as part of PE and science unit on motion. Music woven into poetry and reading. There are myriad ways to do this well.
The Fillmore crowd seems to be conflating art-infused education with arts enrichment or "art for arts' sake." It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. But there is absolutely no justification for busing the little ones from Marie Reed and Ross over two miles each way once a week. If Fillmore staff and their resources are so great, and if Ward 2 schools are so crowded, then shouldn't the Fillmore program be moved to a newer building in a less crowded school like...Marie Reed post renovation? Stoddert, Key, and Hyde-Addison parents, is Fillmore so great that you'd be willing to have your kids sent over to Ward 1 once a week for the best arts education? Or is Fillmore so great because it's in your backyard, inside your destination middle school? The principals are responsible for the budget and staffing. If they really want Fillmore, they are the ones who will fight for it. Each year there are fewer and fewer schools in Fillmore. That's a good thing for kids. They shouldn't have to be bused around for arts education that's completely from their day-to-day learning. Nobody can dispute Fillmore's value to thousands of students in the past. But a storied history of "art for art's sake" alone does not justify the Fillmore model in this century. |
Anonymous
Ellington is a done deal. Get over it. Fix Coolidge instead. Almost the same amount of money $150M+ but for only 300 students and maybe half will graduate. |
Anonymous
You should take a long hard look in the mirror and think about how disgusting of a person you are. |
Anonymous
You're kidding, right? 
I've taken a long hard look at a balance sheet or two, a checkbook, a paycheck, some tax returns, etc.... I care about money well spent vs. money flushed down the toilet. I'm totally happy with what I see in the mirror, but I have to tell you I'm mighty frustrated with the idiocracy that runs this self-important town. |
Anonymous
Get back to me when you actually give a crap about the kids that do attend and will attend Coolidge. Go walk through the building, then call those kids money flushed down the toilet and call yourself a good person. See if maybe you have a little hesitation. |
Anonymous
|
NP. Students at Coolidge now and in future can go to Roosevelt. It's gorgeous and has plenty of surplus capacity. Coolidge also lacks any leadership - has had a succession of failed principals over the last decade. No one can fix it.
Many more schools with bigger enrollments in greater need of renovation. Do those first. |
Anonymous
According to "GreatSchools" in 2015, a whopping 9% of Coolidge students performed at grade level in English and 0% at grade level in Math. That would be a test of 10th graders. Out of a possible 10 points, Coolidge scored 2 (10 being the best, so 2 is not "2nd place"). According to the 2014 numbers, 51% graduated, so the "maybe half" number above is damn near spot on. PP snark well done. Disgust away if it means telling the truth. |
Anonymous
Considering what awful educational and administrative leadership is in place at Coolidge, the best thing we could do for those students is to send them somewhere better: Roosevelt. Better facility, better academics, better leadership, better athletics, better safety... It's a better environment, if that's what we care about. |
Anonymous
True. Including one who was arrested for getting into an all-out brawl in the parking lot of the school with other staff. At a Homecoming game, no less - what a fine example to set for the student community. http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/DC-High-School-Principal-Surrenders-in-Homecoming-Fight-179551331.html The place is beyond redemption. Send the kids to Roosevelt while they still have a chance at something other than being a drop-out, because even graduating from Coolidge is academically meaningless. |
Anonymous
| The Fillmore ship has sailed. DCPS gave it a full school year warning this year. |
Anonymous
What did DCPS expect parents to do, build replacement arts classrooms themselves? Your "warning" is meaningless if the schools are powerless to fix the problem. |