The application was more than 1,900 pages long and contained questions related to core philosophy, underlying purpose and measurable academic goals.
At the February school board meeting, agenda item 9.14 was the approval/denial of the Capital Area School for the Arts Charter School application. School board member James Thompson made a motion to approve the charter and Danielle Robinson seconded it. Then it came to a vote. With one member absent, two votes in favor and six opposed, the motion failed.
Then a week later, the school board reversed course, and the CASA charter application was approved. According to Jennifer Smallwood, president of the school board, confusion and miscommunication over terminology led to the application’s initial rejection. But, upon further review, “We didn’t have any criteria to deny the charter,” she says.
The school’s principal, Cheryl Giles-Rudawski, believes that perhaps none of the school board members wanted to be the first to say “yes” to the charter, sending a message that the school’s application was of poor quality.
“Our application was strong, so they really had no grounds to deny it,” says Giles-Rudawski. “This was our first application, and, I’ll tell you, it is grueling.”
In a Quandary
Harrisburg’s first arts magnet school was formed in the 1970s, located near N. 3rd and Forster streets, but it eventually had to close its doors due to funding issues, leaving some in the community disappointed.
“Many people, like Lois Lehrman Grass and others, tried to re-surge this arts magnet concept where students, who are gifted and talented in the arts and wanted to continue to be educated through the arts, had an opportunity,” says Giles-Rudawski.
That concept came to fruition in 2001 when Education Director Anne Alsedek from Open Stage of Harrisburg joined forces with Dr. Glenn Zehner, executive director of the Capital Area Intermediate Unit. The partnership brought together the Intermediate Unit’s educational expertise and Open Stage’s arts know-how for a new magnet school for the area.
For nearly 12 years, CASA operated a half-day program of intensive instruction in visual arts, dance, music, film and video and theater. At the time, with the help of former Mayor Stephen Reed, the school found classroom space at Temple University’s Harrisburg campus, as well as at Open Stage. It also rented space from a local church on Chestnut Street.
At first, not everyone in the community fully appreciated what the school was trying to accomplish. “I think there was some confusion, initially, in the first years that it was not really an educational program and it was more like an arts class,” says Giles-Rudawski.
She came onto the scene in 2004 after the principal retired. “They brought me down, and I came kicking and screaming, I wanted nothing to do with this school in a church, but I was here like a week, and I realized that really great things were happening,” she says.
In 2009, CASA moved to its current space at Strawberry Square in downtown Harrisburg. As the country’s recession deepened, the school began to feel the effects, and its fundraising tanked. “So we were in this quandary,” says Giles-Rudawski.
School administrators worked to find scholarship money and did whatever they could to locate funds for students who could not afford to pay the tuition fees.
“I can’t live like that forever, pounding the pavement for scholarships when, in fact, I do need money to feed into the program,” says Giles-Rudawski. “I need better instruments. I need more technology.”
Gradually, as school districts chose not to pay the tuition fees, it fell to the parents to pay, often resulting in students not enrolling at CASA.
“Last year, school districts’ budgets got totally whacked and school districts were cutting their own arts programs, so it was really hard for me to go and ask superintendents and say, ‘Support your kids at CASA when you yourself are cutting your own arts program,’” says Giles-Rudawski. “So we made the decision to go charter.”
Is It a Fit?
CASA Charter School is unique because it educates through the arts. Academic classes are infused by the arts and vice versa. Acceptance is still based on an audition.
“We do that because, if you’ve never picked up an instrument, it wouldn’t be the class for you. It’s really not about exclusion, it’s about making sure it’s a good instructional fit,” says Giles-Rudawski.
Once accepted, students will commit to one of the six different areas of art: creative writing, visual art, dance, music, film and video or theater. Each year, students will be required to have two credits in the art area they successfully audition for.
By mid-June, more than 110 students had come to the school to audition, and that didn’t include any of the returning students from last year. “We’re just really excited. It’s a little bit out of the traditional format for a public school. Not all kids fit at CASA. I always tell parents: bring your son or daughter here, meet the school, meet the students, meet the staff and you’ll know if it’s a fit or not—and usually it is,” says Giles-Rudawski.
CASA Charter School offers a full curriculum for grades 9 through 12, as well as a school counselor and nurse. During its first year, the school will enroll some 160 students and will offer some of the courses online and in hybrid models until it is able to hire a full complement of teachers. “As we expand, those teachers will be hired,” says Giles-Rudawski.
In the past, 94 percent of students who attended CASA went on to college. “Most of our kids here are motivated to go on,” says Giles-Rudawski. “I think you come here, and you get validated by your abilities, and so I think that gives you the confidence to pursue higher education.”
Charter schools remain a topic of debate. As an educator, Giles-Rudawski supports public education, yet she’s not much of a fan of charter schools. Though she does think, if there’s an opportunity to create a school that can be successful to a population of students, then it should be done. “I do think some students can be better educated outside of the traditional public school environment whether that’s a cyber or charter school model,” says Giles-Rudawski.
Not everyone agrees with her. School board member Brendan Murray, who began his two-year term in 2012, decided to run because he wanted to give back to the community that he loves so much. “I absolutely could help this district get to a better place than where it is now, and I believed that the only way to do that is to be on the board,” says Murray.
During his tenure, seven or eight charter school applications have come before the board. Sifting through the binder-sized amount of information can be difficult. “I’ve learned so much in the time that I’ve been on the board that I’ve been able to pick out the good applications from the bad pretty easily now,” he says.
Some of the charter school applications that came before the board were not on par academically with what the state Department of Education requires. “I couldn’t vote for any charter school that didn’t know what the standards were going to be for the state coming up in the near future,” says Murray.
Paramount to a charter school’s success is its ability to predict the number of students who will enroll, he says. Should the school fail to meet its enrollment goal, a hole will exist in the budget, making it a challenge to sustain the school for the period of its charter. In addition to enrollment, a school’s financial operations play a large role in its success.
“The number one thing that ruins a charter school after five years is not their academics, but their actual fiscal setup, who is doing the actual money handling,” says Murray.
With regard to CASA’s charter school application, identifying grounds to deny it proved difficult. “It wasn’t the academics, it wasn’t anything other than I don’t believe in taking money out from the students as a whole to help certain other students out. I don’t think that’s the best way that academics can be done,” says Murray. “That’s just a principle of mine.”
While Murray did vote against approving CASA’s charter, he does want the school to succeed. But he worries about the larger population of students in the district.
“I love what CASA is going to offer and, now that that it is part of our district, I will make sure, from now on, that anything that we can do to make sure it thrives, it will get that from me,” says Murray. “But, as a principled person, I don’t believe that you give a golden ticket to anyone, like Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory, and help one or two people out when the rest are suffering, especially with the economics of our district and the financial problems that we have.”
With the beginning of the new school year, the City of Harrisburg has made a statement about its support of young people and the arts.
“We have totally gone into this, primarily for the students of Harrisburg and the Harrisburg area to be educated through the arts,” says Giles-Rudawski. “There’s just something about young people in the arts. I don’t have bullying. I don’t have cliques. I just have people who are very tolerant, collaborative and respectful of different opinions.”
