The Chicago High School for the Arts, or ChiArts, thrives in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. ChiArts’ Class of 2024 graduates face bright futures. They will study engineering, sculpture, sociology, jazz, premed, poetry and more. This range of opportunity exists only because the students who attend ChiArts have access to a robust academic and arts education.
Recent changes in Chicago Public Schools’ funding model threaten the continued success of one of CPS’ brightest lights. ChiArts, founded in 2009 by a group of civic leaders and philanthropists committed to increasing diversity in the arts and offering access to high-quality arts education for promising students from across the city, was Chicago’s first public arts high school. Each year, ChiArts offers about 600 “scholar-artists” a unique combination of regular academic classes funded by CPS and an intensive program of study and performance in one of five arts conservatories — visual art, theater, music, creative writing and dance — taught by professional artists and funded by private donors. ChiArts is entirely tuition-free.
Attending ChiArts requires discipline and commitment from students and their families. The school day runs from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extra class and performance opportunities after school. ChiArts students come from all 50 wards, many traveling long distances. The school is also the only one of its kind in the country that actively recruits students with little or no previous arts training; about half of all attendees enter as novice artists.
Under the new CPS funding formula, 93% of traditional district-run schools are poised to see an increase in per-pupil funding, and 90% expect a rise in overall funding. However, many nontraditional schools, including ChiArts, are anticipating significant reductions in overall funding. The current CPS funding allocation for ChiArts academic programs in the coming school year is more than $500,000 less, or 7% lower, than our funding for the school year that just ended. ChiArts will be forced to make substantial staff cuts.
Students audition for the school with the knowledge they will receive a well-rounded and balanced education. ChiArts students and all of Chicago’s children deserve an education that lays a strong foundation for whichever college or career they choose.
This disparity in funding is unfair and arbitrary — there is no justification for penalizing students in successful schools simply because the schools are structured differently. ChiArts is committed to maintaining high academic standards and providing comprehensive educational experiences. The proposed cuts threaten the quality of the academic programming ChiArts students need and deserve.
We recognize that CPS faces massive financial and other challenges, and we understand that the new allocation process was intended to increase equity and access to high-quality programming across the district. But the new funding formula should not and need not threaten a school like ChiArts, whose very mission is increased equity and access and which provides opportunities to aspiring artists who wouldn’t have them elsewhere.
Art is not magic. The best art just makes you think it’s magic. But the words, notes, pictures and ideas that seem to fly so freely from the fingertips to the viewer or listener are the results of thousands of hours of rigorous instruction and practice of the scholar-artists, academic teachers and the working Chicago artists who teach at ChiArts. They should not be made collateral damage for a system or an ideology.
Chicago is widely known as a world-class center for arts and culture, and graduates of The Chicago High School for the Arts are increasingly contributing to the richness, vitality and diversity of the city’s vibrant arts sector.
CPS should treat ChiArts as the asset it is and ensure continued support for the school’s critical mission.
Tina Boyer Brown is executive director at The Chicago High School for the Arts, otherwise known as ChiArts.
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