"For years, Osa was a school that required students to audition into the pathways, now that the school is slowly taking away this process, how are things changing?"--Maya Mastropasqua, 8th grade
Oakland School For the Arts (OSA) is a very unique school and community, especially when you consider that arts education isn't actually that common for most public schools. The CalMatters article Arts Education is Woefully Underfunded states that, “Only 1 in 5 public schools in California has a dedicated teacher for traditional arts programs like music, dance, theater and art, or newer forms of creative expression like computer graphics, animation, coding, costume design and filmmaking.” This is why OSA’s mission statement, “to offer immersive arts experiences in a college preparatory setting,” is one that is not only vital to the entirety of a school's value and function, but really the whole public education system.
OSA is a charter school, which essentially means that it is its own school district made up of one school. So when OUSD gave the school a choice, deciding between staying a charter school and giving up the audition process, or becoming part of OUSD, a lot went into it. “Schools are always running out of money and programs get cut and we’re a school that if the arts gets cut we have no school, where within a bigger school district decisions can be made that impact the arts,” Oakland School for the Arts Executive Director, Mike Oz explains. “So we’re able to really prioritize that arts is central to everything we do and we’re not going to compromise it.”
With auditions at OSA, a student would submit an application consisting of a short portfolio of their work for whatever sub-pathway they were auditioning into. “The audition process used to be like one step a young person would have to take to show their level of dedication and commitment to being a part of this specialized education that we do here,” Visual Arts Chair Pablo Cristi explains. However, auditions are now being phased out grade by grade. Meaning, last year there was no audition policy for incoming sixth graders, this year for incoming sixth and seventh, and so on. By 2027, no students will audition for OSA.
In the second year of the new policy change, arts teachers are still figuring how to correctly accommodate all students in their classroom. Literary Arts Chair and member of the Step It Up team, Jordan Karnes, hasn't encountered too many challenges when it comes to teaching students who didn’t audition into the program. “It hasn’t changed too much since it’s only really been for sixth and seventh grade and so I think we’ll start to see more of an impact when it gets to high school,” Karnes said, an opinion that seems to be common with the other departments.
First year Dance Chair, Kimberly Davagian, says that right now her strategy is teaching the middle school class the basics, and the highschool class more advanced material. “That sixth through eighth training is like the basement, and without a strong foundation of a house or a basement, then the second floor can’t stand. So you need to start with that, and then the rest of the house can be solid,” she says.
However, as high schoolers come in without previous experience, the classes will need to be split up differently. “I think at that phase we’ll have different instructors working with different folks at the same time. So those students that have had a lot of information and had a lot of movement information in their bodies will be in one room. The students that still are kind of learning about those foundational skills will go here [in a second room] and we’ll have two teachers going at the same time,” Davagian says. “So those more advanced students will still be pushed, and the students that are newer to dance will get the information they need to succeed moving forward.”
For Instrumental Music Chair, Emily Tian, however, the change has had a more sudden impact. It has already required the department to make some changes to the teaching style. “I definitely feel there’s more students who need more individual attention from all the faculty because before, when we had auditions all the students, they had to match certain standards to come in.”
Like Literary Arts, Fashion Design Chair, Linda Ricciardi sees the Fashion department as one of the less affected sub-pathways. “When I do/did auditions, I took in kids that had a lot of different types of skills and past experiences in the art form,” she says. “So the range of skill I am seeing now from non-auditioning students seems just the same to me. For example, what I see from my current 6th and 7th graders (non-auditioned) and what I have seen in the past is really not very different. Everyone just learns and grows at their own pace.”
While the Dance department will still need to make changes over time, Davagian, the Dance Chair, is open and ready to help students of all skill levels. “Still figuring for people who come in without dance training, what we need to set them up for success, so I’m just kind of learning that right now, and want to make sure I’m able to facilitate the dancers that want to go on and perhaps dance professionally and continue to go on and mentor them to get to where they want to go in their dance careers as well as people who are new to dance and fostering a love for movement and creativity and expressing oneself.”
OSA Instrumental teachers have previously only had to teach students who already have some level of understanding of their instrument. Although Tian does want the aforementioned “individual attention” to be given to her students, it’s been hard to figure out how to effectively do that. “I don’t know if our class time will be enough to cater to all our students,” Tian says. “In the middle school piano group right now, we have two eighth graders, and all the others are sixth and seventh. I think there’s six or seven students and only one or two know how to play piano a little bit and the others are very very beginner. So I feel like there’s no time for me to give attention to everyone.”
Seventh grade Viola student in Instrumental Music, Madeleine Gamson-Knight, has also noticed a difference in skill level between the different grades. “The skills that the 8th graders have are very high, they are really good and have been playing for a while. The 7th graders are good as well, but not as good as the 8th graders. And the 6th graders vary. Some have been playing for sometime, and some are just starting.”
Eighth grade Theater student Eli Morse has also seen a slight change of skill level from grade to grade, but nothing particularly dramatic, “I'd say that the skill levels change a bit from grade to grade, with 8th probably being the best of middle school. Not because the other grades are bad, but 8th graders have received more teaching, experience and overall know more about it,” he says.
Lola Wold Bacigalupo, an eighth grader studying in the Vocal sub-pathway, has noticed that in her department, the varied skill levels can be an issue without individual attention. “When we're in a choir, they have to teach a lot of the basic stuff which is frustrating to me because I’m an eighth grader, and they’re teaching us really basic things,” says Wold Bacigalupo. “Which I get, and is fine, but it’s changed because before it wasn’t as basic as it is right now because people don’t know how to do stuff.”
As of right now, most middle school students are around the same level. “It is significant in some cases,” Davagian says of her department. “So, there are some students who catch on very quickly, who don’t have a big history with having movement education, but they have a natural grasp for it and they're able to pick up movement and material and movement concepts quickly.”
The current thinking of the Visual Arts department is to set up an extra course for high schoolers to learn the basics, “The future of this would have to require an additional class or an additional space so there could be a catch course,” says Cristi, who suggests an extra, required class for new students in higher grades. Bacigalupo believes the Vocal sub-pathway should follow suit,giving newer students some sort of separate instruction, so as to teach newer students the basics, and push students who already know them. “Maybe instead of auditioning, they should send stuff to learn before school, like basic theory or something,” she says.
Step it Up is a program that has been set up to support students entering any of the nine art sub-pathways. According to the Step It Up Program page on OSA’s site, their mission is to “support OSA’s diversity and outreach commitment by making arts education accessible to BIPOC youth from Title 1 OUSD schools.” It achieves this through “after school arts education programming, recruitment efforts, and community partnerships.” Students who participate will even get additional preference in the lottery admission process.
The program will be able to help the Instrumental Music sub-pathway by giving students more basic instruction on how to play their instrument. “That will start to become more support for students who are coming in without auditioning,” Tian says of the program. “So we will have after school programs, private lessons to help the students who don’t have any experience.”
Like everything else at the school, changes will also be made to how OSA utilizes the Step it Up Program. “My goal would be we have this really comprehensive Step it Up Program,” Oz says. “We have maybe 10 flat land schools in Oakland that are Title 1 schools that we partner with, and we bring all this information about our program to those schools. [Once we know] that they know clearly what we offer they go, ‘hey I’d like to be part of that, and I’d like preparation’ and we actually provide the training, in fourth and fifth grade.”
Karnes has hopes the combined efforts of the new audition change rule and the Step it Up Program will help with the school's diversity initiative. “I find that without the barriers, a lot of parents living on the other side of the tunnel are like ‘oh this is a good school, let me put my kid here’,” Karnes says, “I feel like once a school like ours is successful and you see students coming out doing great things, all these families in Oakland want to do it but it then really tips the scales of what our diversity looks like.”
OSA is finding as many ways as possible to make the school accessible to all students. “We just keep perpetuating a world where those who already have, get more and those who are struggling are not able to get what they need,” Oz says. Another initiative the school has out in place is in the preference of the lottery. “We have the highest percentage of students coming from Title 1 schools,” Oz explains, “which means that at least 40% of the kids at their elementary schools were on free and reduced lunch.”
The new policy has also presented the school with an opportunity to reestablish the passion of the arts in students. The Instrumental Music sub-pathway, for one, has been dealing with a lack of passion. “Some students come in and they don't even know what they’re going to do just because their parents told them [to come to OSA], and we’ve had problems, definitely with students who don’t want to be here,” Tian said. This is a common and inevitable problem, even with the audition process, that the school is working on.
When the school was first preparing for the audition rule change, a model of the school was presented with a less strict focus on one sub-pathway. “You come in and you're a general arts student, performing arts or design visual media arts and then at the end of the school year sixth grade you can audition. I think it should still be possible where you don’t pass any of your auditions and there should still be a place for you as an artist,” Oz explains. However, the idea was scrapped because of all the extra classrooms that would be needed and funding to all the extra teachers it would cost.
A lot of changes still need to be made to OSA. Through time, as well as trial and error, it will, and all the arts sub-pathways will be able to cater to all student needs, no matter what skill level they are at.
Like everything else at the school, changes will also be made to how OSA utilizes the Step it Up Program. “My goal would be we have this really comprehensive Step it Up Program,” Oz says. “We have maybe 10 flat land schools in Oakland that are Title 1 schools that we partner with, and we bring all this information about our program to those schools. [Once we know] that they know clearly what we offer they go, ‘hey I’d like to be part of that, and I’d like preparation’ and we actually provide the training, in fourth and fifth grade.”
Karnes has hopes the combined efforts of the new audition change rule and the Step it Up Program will help with the school's diversity initiative. “I find that without the barriers, a lot of parents living on the other side of the tunnel are like ‘oh this is a good school, let me put my kid here’,” Karnes says, “I feel like once a school like ours is successful and you see students coming out doing great things, all these families in Oakland want to do it but it then really tips the scales of what our diversity looks like.”
OSA is finding as many ways as possible to make the school accessible to all students. “We just keep perpetuating a world where those who already have, get more and those who are struggling are not able to get what they need,” Oz says. Another initiative the school has out in place is in the preference of the lottery. “We have the highest percentage of students coming from Title 1 schools,” Oz explains, “which means that at least 40% of the kids at their elementary schools were on free and reduced lunch.”
The new policy has also presented the school with an opportunity to reestablish the passion of the arts in students. The Instrumental Music sub-pathway, for one, has been dealing with a lack of passion. “Some students come in and they don't even know what they’re going to do just because their parents told them [to come to OSA], and we’ve had problems, definitely with students who don’t want to be here,” Tian said. This is a common and inevitable problem, even with the audition process, that the school is working on.
When the school was first preparing for the audition rule change, a model of the school was presented with a less strict focus on one sub-pathway. “You come in and you're a general arts student, performing arts or design visual media arts and then at the end of the school year sixth grade you can audition. I think it should still be possible where you don’t pass any of your auditions and there should still be a place for you as an artist,” Oz explains. However, the idea was scrapped because of all the extra classrooms that would be needed and funding to all the extra teachers it would cost.
A lot of changes still need to be made to OSA. Through time, as well as trial and error, it will, and all the arts sub-pathways will be able to cater to all student needs, no matter what skill level they are at.