Story by LEE SHERMAN
Photos by JUDY BLANKENSHIP

VANCOUVER, Washington— The young applicant sits before the selection committee, pondering the question: What would you like to be when you grow up?

"Well," the sixth-grader says, after a moment's thought, "I'd like to be a lawyer. Or maybe a plumber." Quizzical looks pass among the committee members as they contemplate the deep chasm between unclogging toilets and litigating lawsuits.

But that chasm is only one reason the boy's answer is surprising. The other is this: He's seeking admission to a school where half his day will be awash in watercolors and sonatas, pliés and soliloquies. Etchings and engravings by Northwest printmakers hang in the school's foyer. Cellos and bass viols, zipped snugly into brown canvas cases, fill an unused locker room. Down the hall, a string quartet wrestles with a difficult stanza by Schubert, while another ensemble huddles in a cramped practice room, rehearsing Haydn's "Quartet #29." In the gym, dancers leap and spin to the live cadence of a local jazz drummer. A girl works intently in the ceramics studio, shaping a sculpture of rock star Courtney Love -a clay bust sprouting twisted plastic wrap for hair. In the Black Box, a visiting director leads student actors through an exercise in "movement theater," using shimmering black plastic, slithering ropes, howling voices, and frantic drumbeats to create the illusion of a storm at sea.

Does a boy with down-to-earth visions of pipe fittings and legal briefs belong in this magnet school for the arts? Absolutely, says Deb Brzoska, Artistic Director of the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. The 550-student public school seeks a middle ground, she says, between the rarified atmosphere of a conservatory, which admits only gifted students with lofty artistic ambitions, and the "fuzzy places" that just "play around" with art.

"What we wanted was a program in the arts for anyone," says Brzoska, whose career in arts education spans two decades. "We want to change the culture of the arts in America, where the arts can be part of your life whether you're

an attorney or a plumber."

As for the boy wavering between the bar and the wrench, "We just hope he has an aesthetic sensibility about his plumbing or his legal work," she says with a playful smile.

As the first magnet established in the Vancouver School District, the school-which serves sixth- through 12th-graders-had a long waiting list from the moment it opened its doors in 1996. To get in, kids don't need talent. They don't even need good grades. What they do need is passion-a serious desire to study music, dance, theater, visual arts (painting, sculpture, drawing, photography) literary arts (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama), moving-image arts (film and video production), or, perhaps, all of the above. Although kids who covet a spot in the school don't audition, they don't skate in on a whim, either. Applicants, says Brzoska, must jump through "14 flaming hoops" to earn admission: letters of recommendation, teacher testimonials, informational meetings, parental blessings, and, finally, a personal interview with the selection committee.

"By that time, you've got to want to be here," Brzoska notes. "It's a whole lot of trouble."

In the afternoon arts block, students take classes on three levels: "explorer" classes that introduce them to new art forms, "survey" classes that delve a little deeper, and "focus" classes that immerse them in advanced instruction. By graduation, students have experienced, at least briefly, every art form offered at the school. And the arts curriculum is as deep as it is wide. Students ponder historical and cultural questions surrounding various artistic styles and trends. They grapple with ethical issues. Advanced students may compose an étude, conduct a symphony, or write and direct a play. Resident and visiting artists share their gifts with students.

But, because one does not live by Beethoven alone, a solid core of academics anchors the program. Students spend their mornings studying algebra and geometry, chemistry and earth sciences, U.S. and world history, Spanish and French. Critics' concerns that arts and academic excellence don't mix were challenged last year when the senior class earned the highest SAT scores in the Clark County. The school doesn't claim full credit, because the students had attended the arts magnet for only two years. But the soaring SAT scores do suggest that serious artists can be serious scholars, too.

Still, art filters into every discipline, no matter how weighty. The chemistry teacher, for instance, is a cellist. Two or three English teachers teach dance as well as Faulkner and Tolstoy. Several history teachers are accomplished painters and sculptors. Studies are woven together in an interdisciplinary tapestry, then dipped in a vat of artistry. Students do theme-based projects, looking for links between subjects and examining how artists express the changing human condition. They create their own metaphors to describe the world as they see it.

"At other schools, you may have to write a report," says eighth-grader Katie Uhte-Strohbehn. "But here, you have to dance or act out a report."

One year, the curriculum centered on an exhibit from New York, on loan to the Portland Art Museum located just across the Columbia River from the Vancouver school. Titled "In the American Grain," the show featured the works of Industrial Revolution-era artists Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, and John Marin. The exhibit catalog served as textbook.

For this year's theme, Northwest Legends and Landscapes, students are reading Timothy Egan's engaging history, The Good Rain. With a grant from Portland Literary Arts, the journalist and historian spent several days at the school, hanging out with the kids and talking about what motivates him as a writer. For a midyear showcase of interdisciplinary projects, student teams chose historic Northwest figures highlighted in Egan's book-John Jacob Astor, the wealthy fur trader who founded Oregon's coastal town of Astoria, for instance. In a hypothetical petition to the National Endowment for the Humanities, each team tried to persuade the funding agency that this heroic or enterprising person merits a monument in his or her honor. Accompanying each petition was a model of the monument. Faculty and staff served as judges.

The school's commitment to blending art with interdisciplinary academics has earned it a prestigious five-year grant from the College Board and the Getty Center for Education in the Arts. The school -one of only five grantees in the United States-will get $25,000 a year to spend on interdisciplinary arts projects, plus access to two professional mentors: art professor and critic Terry Barrett from the University of Ohio, and curriculum expert Alice Kawazoe, an assistant superintendent from Pittsburg, California. In return, the school will provide data for a longitudinal study of the impact of arts training on academic achievement.

As a public school, the magnet gets the same number of per-pupil dollars as every other school in the Vancouver School District. (Unlike many magnet schools in larger urban centers, the school receives no funding from the federal magnet program designed to integrate ethnic groups.) But this is a district that shows serious commitment to arts education. All elementary students have an "integrated arts block" every week, devoted to vocal music, visual arts, and creative dance, and taught by a team of arts specialists. Students also take instrumental music twice weekly.

Calling the arts "a gateway to improved learning," the district holds the philosophy that by "teaching creative approaches to problem solving, enlarging the imagination, and instilling both discipline and wonder," the arts spill over to enrich and enhance learning in all subjects, says Brzoska, who is also Director of K-12 Visual and Performing Arts for the district.

Despite the districtwide commitment to the arts, budget realities still shape programming. That means making trade-offs, says Brzoska. So, at the Vancouver School of Arts and Academics, there are no sports. Dance replaces PE. Foreign language is the only elective outside the arts block. The science labs are spare. The furniture is used. And nothing's fancy, not even the art labs.

"You put your money into what really counts-the teachers and the artists," says Brzoska. "You get the people in place, and the other stuff just kind of comes."

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