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Bond Campaign

Fine Arts Needs

Improvement: New auditorium with 1200 seating capacity.

Current problems: The present auditorium only seats about half of the student body (531 useable seats for 900 students, 57 faculty, plus guests and parents). Much of the balcony is consumed by a walled off area that provides handicap access between classroom floors outside the auditorium. The seating is original and much of it is held together with duct tape. The stage has neither curtains or lighting and there are holes in the stage floor allowing students to look into the room below. BHS is the only high school of its size in the state without a functioning auditorium in which the fine arts can perform. The Community Center is prohibitively expensive and scheduling rehearsal and performance dates is very difficult because of the facility's heavy use. Without a functioning auditorium, BHS also lacks the ability to come together as a group. Students have complained over the years of the lack of a "sense of community" at the high school. Student assemblies, departmental meetings, guest speakers, and vast array of other educational opportunities, which are standard practices at other schools, are not held at BHS because of the poor condition and inadequate size of the old auditorium.

Virtually unchanged from the time it was constructed in 1939, the BHS auditorium can seat only about half the school's 900 students plus faculty and guests. The chairs at the BHS auditorium show the results of 60 years of wear and tear. About 10 percent of the seat cushions are held together with duct tape.

Improvement: New classrooms, practice rooms and storage areas for fine arts classes adjacent to the new auditorium.

Current problems:

Size: All fine arts classrooms are overcrowded in spaces originally designed for much smaller class sizes. Cramped spaces degrade the overall quality of education in every department. For example, the choir room, designed in 1939 for a maximum of 60 students, must now accommodate 110 students.

Every day, some 110 students attending the 4th hour vocal music class cram into the BHS choir practice room, which was designed in 1939 for 60 students.

A lack of storage space for vocal music materials results in this kind of scene, which is typical of the storage situation for the entire BHS fine arts program.

Storage: Storage space is, at best, one-fourth of needed capacity. As a result, teachers waste valuable instruction time transporting instruments and equipment from place to place, with no place to properly store valuable school property. In the visual arts classroom, a storage closet is used for certain kinds of art instruction due to the lack of adequate classroom space. The drama department holds stagecraft class in cramped quarters in the basement of the gym.

Acoustics: Choir is held in a room that was never intended for music and consequently deprives music students of the acoustics needed to properly hear and learn vocal music. Similar problems exist for band and orchestra. The inability for teachers to instruct -- and students to learn -- by hearing in a proper music room hamstrings efforts to take education and performance to a higher level.

General conditions: The general condition of fine arts facilities is extremely poor. The combined band & orchestra classroom is located in the basement of the stadium, where rain leaks into storage and classroom areas. This condition causes damage to musical instruments, equipment and uniforms, and sometimes causes students to become physically ill simply by attending class. The same condition (excessive moisture and mold) exists in the old auditorium.

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Please direct any comments or suggestions regarding this page to:
Granger Meador, Bartlesville High School
gmeador@bps-ok.org