Bartram forced to choose music over art class
The only reason some kids showed up to Bartram High School some days, they say, was because of art. So when news started trickling out that the class had been cut for budgetary reasons, students were shocked, sad, angry.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OKAKHQOMQNGALBUEE5ATIOE76A.jpg)
The only reason some kids showed up to Bartram High School some days, they say, was because of art. So when news started trickling out that the class had been cut for budgetary reasons, students were shocked, sad, angry.
"It broke my heart," said Shanta Moulton, a rising junior. "Art is therapeutic. Everybody has their problems at home, but when you go to art class, it's a real calm place to be."
Bartram has attracted headlines for violence - staffers knocked unconscious by students this school year and the one prior, emblems of a school struggling to recover from chaos and financial woes.
As a result, the school has shed students and is projected to lose more. In 2013-14, it had more than 1,000 students. Next year, it is projected to enroll 670.
When students leave, teachers must also be cut. Chris Palmer, a seven-year veteran instructor who was lauded for building an excellent art program with few resources, was one of the casualties, leaving one of the city's large comprehensive high schools with no art classes.
Bartram will retain graphic design and video production classes, but those are career and technical programs, open to a select group. Teachers said it will keep its music program, too - the only general elective.
Palmer landed a position at another district school, a K-8, but for him, the loss of the art program at Bartram is profound. He wasn't out to mold the next Picasso but to give teenagers an outlet.
"It's hard to articulate how important it is - especially for these kids - to use their minds, their hearts, and their hands," Palmer said. "Art really is an essential tool, dealing with the trauma that these kids in Southwest face."
He worries, too, about what the loss of his program means for a school that has already lost too many things, and about what it says for the school system in general.
"You defund things, and then you say they're not working," Palmer said.
Palmer, an artist himself, managed to create a safe space at Bartram. His room was a place kids wanted to be, students and teachers said. At the end of the year, when other classes were effectively over, he was still giving lessons.
Moulton first heard about Palmer's art class when she was a freshman and friends began talking about going to his room at lunchtime.
"They all wanted to be there," Moulton said.
She landed in the class in September, and despite having very little art experience - many city schools lack art programs - she grew to love it, she said. Now she wants to pursue a career in graphic design.
Palmer reached students in a way that few are able to do, Moulton said.
"In other classes, some people aren't listening, but when you go to Palmer's class, everybody's doing something," she said.
Palmer is modest - he said only that he had "built a lot of relationships. I can feel good about that."
Colleagues heaped lavish praise on him.
"It's really amazing what he can do and what he gets the kids to do," said Sharon Marcus, a Bartram veteran and teacher of English as a second language.
He brightened the school - not just with the murals he painted - but with the way his students - strong students, struggling students, students learning English - worked with him and one another.
"He does exactly what we want in schools - collaborative classrooms," Marcus said. "We all hate to see him go."
At an end-of-the-year student art show Palmer staged for a Friends of Bartram group, two dozen students spoke movingly of what art and Palmer had meant to them, pleading for officials to find a way to keep the program.
Abdul-Mubdi Muhammad, Bartram's principal, said the loss of Palmer's program will have "a major impact" on the school.
"Art adds richness to the building," said Muhammad, who just finished his first year at the school. "Every school should have an art and music program. Those things should be core. It should be impossible to cut them."
There were victories at the school this year - after a spike in incidents, things settled down some, Muhammad said. The worst of the troublemakers left Bartram, and the students who stayed mostly understood the expectations staff have for them. But there was no getting around the budget that never seems able to stretch far enough, Muhammad said.
"We couldn't afford both art and music," Muhammad said, "and that's horrible."