New Chester Upland school weaves arts into lessons

There are purple walls, blue floors, and a golden Sunshine Room in the new Chester Upland School of the Arts.

Students begin the day with singing, and all forms of the arts weave their way through classes until the closing bell.

If the lesson is about Africa, there may be African songs sung and dances danced. If students are learning about the composition of the universe, Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night plays a part.

The new Chester Upland School of the Arts (CUSA) debuted last month in a former high-school-and-middle-school building in Chester. The elementary magnet school is part of an effort to point the district in a new direction.

"We're getting students to be heavily invested early on by giving them something they love - music and dance," said Superintendent Gregory Thornton, "and the beauty is the integration into other core [academic] areas. The arts aren't a la carte. They're in the main diet."

CUSA opened its doors to 200 students on Sept. 4, offering prekindergarten through second grade. The school is to expand to eighth grade, adding a grade level annually.

Students were selected by lottery. They learn reading, science, technology and math, with a liberal infusion of the arts. About 90 families are on a waiting list.

The school fulfills a dream by John Alston, a Swarthmore College music professor who organized a nonprofit foundation to bring an arts school to Chester.

CUSA is operated as a public school in partnership with the foundation Chester Fund for Education and the Arts.

"I wanted our children to be able to compete with students from more affluent circumstances," said Alston, 47, of Brookhaven, who also directs the Chester Children's Chorus. "I want them to have a real shot at attending a school like Swarthmore."

CUSA is one of three district schools that opened this year with the public-private partnership model. The schools are a fresh approach in a district with a history of rotating superintendents, failing test scores and budget deficits. Chester Upland has been under state control since 1994.

The district also has been faced with dwindling enrollment as students abandon its public schools for charter schools. In the elementary and middlegrades, 2,464 attend two charters and 2,662 attend district schools. An additional 1,200 attend Chester High, run by the district.

Last year, a new state oversight board hired Thornton, former chief academic officer with the Philadelphia public schools. He brought with him a track record of creating magnet schools with private help.

In addition to CUSA, Chester also opened the Allied Health High School, in partnership with the Crozer-Keystone Health System, and the School of Science and Discovery, a high school. The latter is in partnership with Project Forward Leap, an academic enrichment program developed by Melvin R. Allen, an associate professor at Millersville University.

"The reality is, I don't have enough resources," Thornton said. "This is like using resources in the community for the greater good, so that students can compete with their peers."

Pam Cherry transferred her children from nondistrict schools to attend CUSA. Cherry turned to CUSA as a way to jolt her 7-year-old son, Towan, out of a troubling malaise. CUSA could tap into his love of music, and perhaps most important, Alston was involved. Cherry's 12-year-old daughter, Asia, sings with Alston in the children's choir.

"His vision is incredible to me. I would cosign anything that he's involved in," Cherry said. "That's why I'm taking this risk."

Alston's vision for CUSA began in the early 1990s. The music professor founded the chorus to re-create the "profound experience" he had singing chorus for six years, starting when he was 11, in Newark, N.J., and Brooklyn, N.Y. His participation took him to Rome to sing for Pope Paul VI and helped him escape a difficult home life with a sometimes absent father.

"The most important thing it gave me was what I would be doing for the rest of my life," Alston said.

He went on to earn music degrees from Yankton (S.D.) College, the University of Northern Iowa, and Indiana University. He taught at Wabash College in Indiana before joining Swarthmore in 1990. Alston teaches music notation, theory and jazz improvisation, and directs the school's orchestra and chorus.

Alston grew the Chester Children's Chorus from seven to 100 singers and started an academic enrichment program for Chester students at Swarthmore. Inspired by the program's success, Alston began looking for resources to open a school.

Alston organized the nonprofit Chester Fund for Education and the Arts and began raising money. Along the way, the school was proposed as private school, a charter school, and finally as a public-private partnership with the district.

The foundation board, which includes other Swarthmore faculty, then helped with the hiring of faculty such as principal Corinne Ryan, a British native who is a former administrator at the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia, and music teacher/vocalist Helen Hagerty, a jazz-band vocalist from Ohio.

So far, the foundation has raised $1.7 million to help fund the school, said board chairman Maurice Eldridge, a Swarthmore administrator. The fund received a financial boost when the school won a $500,000 matching grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation, founded by Doris Buffett, sister of the financier Warren Buffett.

The foundation was impressed with Alston, Thornton, and the public-private partnership model, said Mitty Beal, executive director of the foundation. Doris Buffett has not visited the school, but she plans to, Beal said.

At CUSA, students begin every day singing in the Sunshine Room. One day it's Appalachian folk songs, the next a song Alston wrote and plays at the piano. And there's always the repeat of a rhythmic hip-hop-flavored chant as students leave for their classrooms - in an orderly fashion:

"No pushing, no shoving. My hands are at my side. As we walk, walk, walk - in our line. Walk it out. Walk it out."