By Sara Ballenger
The Community School of Music and Arts has a lot to sing about.
The non-profit school will be breaking ground for its new $11 million campus Saturday. This will be the school’s first permanent home since it opened in 1968. The school is the largest non-profit of its kind to provide arts education in Silicon Valley, said Evy Schiffman, director of communications for CSMA.
The new facility, to be built on 1.6 acres on San Antonio Circle in Mountain View, is scheduled to open in January 2004, with construction starting this month. Once complete, the center will have 17 music studios, ceramics studios, art and music classrooms, a digital arts/electronic music room, a multipurpose room and a 200-seat theater.
“A facility of this kind is long overdue in Silicon Valley,” said Executive Director Angela McConnell. “An entire generation in our region - since 1978’s notorious Proposition 13 - has been educated in California public schools without mandatory music and arts education programs.”
CSMA has a strong relationship with local schools. CSMA currently provides music and visual arts-in-the-schools programs, Music in Action and Arts in Action. The school will also soon boast a new resource center to encourage teachers to use music and art in their teaching.
“Our in-schools program reaches about 20,000 students a year in about 15 schools from San Mateo to San Jose,” Schiffman said. “Every child in the Mountain View public school system gets an arts education through our program.” Bullis-Purissima, Oak and Springer schools in Los Altos and St. Nicholas School in Los Altos Hills have participated in CSMA programs.
Until the new facility is built, CSMA will be at an interim site at 220 View St., Mountain View.
“At the interim site, we have everything on site - after 35 years of doing things at different locations,” Shiffman said. “It’s kind of like we had a storefront, without a recognizable identity. Now we have a facility to match who we are and what we do.”
The interim site has 15,000 square feet. This has allowed the school to add a slew of new courses, including expanded programs for adults, such as drawing, painting, decorative arts, three-dimensional arts and multicultural arts.
“For 35 years, CSMA has been providing opportunities for people of all ages, backgrounds and economic means to discover their passion through music and the visual arts,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s point is illustrated by the school’s motto, “Arts for all.” The school is open to anyone. It provides $145,000 a year in scholarships. Students are also awarded grants for free music lessons in exchange for performing at CSMA functions.
“There is no requirement for our school, you just have to want to be involved with the arts. No one is turned away,” Shiffman said.
About 7 percent of CSMA’s budget goes to scholarships. Half of the school’s income comes out of tuition, with 20 percent of its revenue coming from contracts with school districts for art and music teachers.
The school still needs to raise $4 million to complete the new facility.
“Once we secure the balance for the new building, the board and I are looking forward to establishing a permanent operating endowment, to ensure that the center for music and arts education will be a significant cultural resource for generations to come,” McConnell said.
For more information, call 961-0342 or logon to www.arts4all.org.
