Mothballed in 2019, Broadmoor Middle School may soon be reborn as a magnet school with a visual and performing arts focus, but East Baton Rouge Parish School Board members have an array of concerns they want addressed first.
The proposal from Superintendent Sito Narcisse, , is to create a districtwide visual and performing arts school for grades six to 12 with about 625 students when full, or about 75 students per grade.
The new superintendent has decided that yet another expansion of magnet programs, which have steadily grown in the past decade, is key to reversing district enrollment declines and solidifying the district’s shaky finances.
“I believe we can create rigor, I believe we can create expectations without making this a dedicated magnet school,” board member Tramelle Howard said Thursday.
Broadmoor would have two long-standing arts-focused elementary schools that would feed into it: Ի.
Unlike most magnet programs, it would not have academic admission criteria. Instead, incoming students would have to turn in a portfolio of work and be interviewed.
“I do have concerns about how it’s going to impact other schools,” said board member Dadrius Lanus, singling out nearby Broadmoor High as well as , which focuses on visual and performing arts.
Theresa Porter, director of magnet programs, said not requiring a minimum GPA or test score would set the new school apart from McKinley Middle, which has such criteria, so the two don’t compete directly against each other. Porter also said the admission interviews would be a way to help identify students who would benefit from the program but who have not necessarily had much background in the arts.
Even so, Howard worried that making it a dedicated magnet program at all would create unnecessary barriers to entry. He noted that in sixth grade, he was able to join his middle school band and learn trumpet despite never having played that instrument before.
“Because I was exposed and held to an expectation, I met that expectation and played trumpet for the rest of my life,” Howard said.
Narcisse, who worked in several big cities before coming to Baton Rouge in January, said it’s common for cities to have a visual and performing arts high school. He said it would enable students to master a particular artistic craft.
“This school will have more of a conservatory model,” Narcisse said.
The conservatory approach, he said, should prove attractive to certain students outside the school district in private and independent charter schools, meaning less chance that it would compete with other traditional and magnet schools.
“We don’t have that model right now at any of the high schools,” Narcisse said.
The School Board when it meets again July 22. If approved, it would be the first secondary school in Baton Rouge focused strictly on visual and performing arts. It would join schools in other cities with a similar setup, including the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.
Empty since May, Broadmoor Middle School in Baton Rouge is set for a $15 million remodeling project soon, but that’s likely to get pushed back…
With the magnet plan, Narcisse is breathing new life into an idea floated by board member Jill Dyason a few years ago.
For years, Broadmoor Middle was home to a small but popular visual and performing arts magnet program. But as part of the final settlement of the school system’s 51-year-old desegregation lawsuit, the program was discontinued about 15 years ago. McKinley Middle School, which had just been rebuilt, then became the district’s sole middle school focusing on visual and performing arts.
“Buckskin Bill” Black, a local children’s TV star who represented the Broadmoor area on the School Board from 1995 to 2010, fought in vain to preserve the program.
After the program ended, Broadmoor Middle slowly lost students and was in danger of state takeover because of poor academic performance. By 2018, school system leaders were considering closing the school, which they did the following year.
As they considered closing Broadmoor Middle, they debated the future of its facility at 1225 Sharp Road.
Then-Superintendent Warren Drake suggested renovating the building, which he said “has good bones,” and making it the permanent home for the Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet. Dyason, who served on the board with Black, suggested instead turning it into a visual and performing arts school in honor of Black.
One of Baton Rouge’s most beloved figures, William “Bill” Black, known to most as “Buckskin” Bill,” died Wednesday, according to family members.
Unable to decide what to do, the board agreed to set aside $15 million to eventually renovate the building, which was built in 1961, and figure out later what to do with it.
