An inspiration for the recent “Step Up” movies about underclass redemption through the arts, the Baltimore School for the Arts is in no way improvisational about what’s required to accomplish its inner-city mission.
The 28-year-old school of art, music, theater and dance recently completed a four-year, $30 million renovation of its Mount Vernon campus — $15 million from the private foundation that, along with a board of overseers and the Baltimore City Public School System, runs this urban incubator of future arts professionals. The foundation, crucial to the high school’s unique mission, also defrays 30 percent of the school’s $3.3 million annual operating cost and almost all of its $500,000-a-year, after-school arts outreach to lower-school children.
“We were used as the model for ‘Step Up,’ ” said Leslie Shepard, school director, referring to the 2006 dance movie. “They came in and looked at our facilities, so their designers could use it as a basis — though it was a bit different from what we do.
“We train students for careers in art, music, theater or dance,” Shepard added of the 357-student, 100-teacher, growing enterprise that is free to Baltimore City residents, “and provide them with a rigorous, college preparatory education at the same time.”
“It’s just an amazing school,” said Jonathan Carney, Baltimore Symphony concertmaster and parent of one BSA student, one graduate and one prospect. “The one reason that I would have more children is to send them to that incredible school.”
Situated in the former “Alcazar” building, the school — alma mater to actor Jada Pinkett Smith, conductor Andrew Graham and many other notables — blossomed from an urban renewal glint in former Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer’s eye, said Mark Joseph, former chairman of developer, the Shelter Group, and a school founder.
“The mayor steered enough money to fully renovate [the Alcazar] and create the school,” said Joseph, who, with his wife, Patricia, donated $1.5 million toward the recent renovation. “And that’s how it got going.”
Ranked in the top five public arts high schools in the country in 1990 and again in 2001, BSA admits on the basis of portfolio review or audition only, but nevertheless holds students to high academic standards.
“We know we’re dealing with kids who are 14 years old when they make the decision to come here,” said Warren Moore, BSA’s head of academics. “So we also prepare them for a [traditional] career.”
