The plans for the new Roxbury K-8 do not include an auditorium or performance space. Roxbury and Cloonan schools currently both have an auditorium. These schools are going from two auditoriums to zero.
The current plan is to have a raised stage in the gym, which must also function as the sole gym for nine grades. The Board of Education’s Labor Chair Adam Vandervoort said “For a k-8 school in an urban environment it is sort of vanishingly unlikely that you would have a dedicated auditorium.” A quick peak on Google Maps will demonstrate that the “environment” is not exactly urban as it is surrounded by a suburban sprawl of million dollar homes. If the environment isn’t “urban” then what are we talking about?
In a letter responding to a Stamford Public School band teacher, the district offered a list of excuses as to why the new Roxbury K-8 will not have an auditorium. “…K-8 schools across Connecticut rarely include dedicated auditoriums, because these spaces are either ineligible for grant reimbursement or they are reimbursed at a lower rate than spaces dedicated to core programming,” and “…the auditorium would have been reimbursed at one-half of the eligible percentage of the other design elements.”
Well, not exactly “the auditorium.” They are referring to limited eligibility areas under Sec. 10-287c-18 which apply only to the stage seating area. Components such as the stage, stage floor, backstage, orchestra pit, tech booth, lighting and AV rooms, and theatre instructional space are reimbursed at Stamford’s full reimbursement rate. In effect, the objection is not to an auditorium itself, but to paying for seating that is reimbursed at a lower rate.
When addressing the Roxbury community, a representative from the TSKP Studio stated “…the state has drifted away from building auditorium at the elementary and middle school levels. Their feeling is that square footage is useful only intermittently throughout the school year and often sits vacant throughout the school day.”
We agree on one thing: the state is failing us and drifting away from providing our children the bare minimum for their education. Would we accept such a ridiculous concept in another context? “The state has been drifting away from having our students read at grade level,” or “the state has been drifting away from efficient fire department response times.” Since when have we allowed the degradation of our children’s education to be sold to us as a benchmark of achievement?
Are auditoriums really left vacant throughout the year? Currently Roxbury Elementary has performances and rehearsals in our auditorium for the following: kindergarten chorus holiday, first-grade Thanksgiving chorus, second-grade Earth Day chorus, third-grade recorder, fourth-grade holiday chorus, fourth-grade spring concert chorus, fourth-grade band, fourth-grade strings, fifth-grade chorus winter concert, fifth-grade band, and fifth-grade strings. Every performance requires two shows to accommodate the entire school, and each performance has up to eight rehearsals to coordinate logistics of band, chorus, and stage crew. Any time these events happen in a multiuse gym, this space cannot function as a gym for nine grades.
Our chorus students prepare for months by singing vocal parts with harmony, dancing, public speaking, vocal solos, and acting for a movie. Our instrumental students — the same program SPS tried to eliminate — learn to set up a stage of musical instruments that span an entire symphony and break it down independently in order to transition from strings to band, and then to their full Rockestra.
We have a stage crew that operates stage lights, spot lights, microphones, sound boards, projectors, screens, and even designs graphics for concerts and events. They collaborate as a team and prepare for weeks to make sure everyone delivers for a single performance without adult intervention. The teamwork, dedication, and grit it takes to coordinate chorus, band, strings, stage crew —and execute so many moving parts at the same time and in the correct order — cannot occur on a raised platform underneath a basketball hoop and require a proper auditorium performance space.
Roxbury Elementary utilizes its auditorium to such a degree that it is central to students’ sense of community, touches every facet of their experience with the arts, and facilitates its designation as a Higher Order of Thinking School . Every month we have a HOTS town meeting that is a gathering where students share what they have learned, explain their thinking, and reflect on the learning process. Our HOTS designation enables visiting artists to use our auditorium for their performances. All these events require two showings to accommodate the entire school.
Given this explanation, can you now grasp the degree of disconnect it would take to suggest that any of this can be done in the proposed multiuse space? If you are not there yet, let me drive my point home by reminding the reader that we now have to add sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to that same gym along with whatever band concerts and rehearsals, chorus concerts and rehearsals, town halls, assemblies, and still function as a gym for those grades as well.
Maybe TSKP should sit down and talk with Darien Public Schools (our bordering town) because they seem to have not “drifted away from building auditoriums at the elementary and middle school levels.” Instead, they are contemplating refurbishing or rebuilding their auditorium space.
Their principal stated that one of the reasons for the new auditorium is because “groups often have to rehearse and perform at Darien High School due to space constraints at the middle school.” The irony of that statement would be funny if it were not so embarrassing, because in that same letter to our SPS band teacher the district wrote “I am sure that Principal Roata and Principal Rinaldi can work together to ensure that the Roxbury community has access to the Westhill Auditorium, as needed, for concerts and other performances.” Maybe the kids in Darien get special privileges because they are not “urban?”
Every excuse the district has made for not providing an auditorium for Roxbury’s K-8 holds true for Westhill High School and they are obviously getting an auditorium. The elephant in the room is that there isn’t enough money or space to build a K-8 and they should pick an elementary or a middle school and do it right. That ship has sailed.
If Stamford was proactive in school construction we could have saved $70 million removing mold from buildings without climate control. We are all too familiar with the noises a politician makes when they refuse to be accountable. If they spent half the time finding solutions as they do finding ways to justify the unjustifiable, Stamford could build an education system that people would relocate to be a part of. I believe we can be that beacon for the rest of the country.
As always, money comes first and kids come second. The new Roxbury K-8 isn’t a solution to anything, it is the creation of a multitude of problems. When the time comes for people to be held accountable, the guard will have changed and those responsible will have one thing to say to Stamford: “It’s not my problem.”
We have some new faces in our district and it is imperative that we contact our representatives, including Superintendent Tamu Lucero , the Board of Education , the Board of Finance , Mayor Caroline Simmons , and Sen. Patricia Billie Miller . If the community isn’t informed and heard, it is Stamford’s children that pay the consequences.
This is a failure to our children’s future that will be literally set in stone for generations. I have hope for the new guard and our new superintendent, but there is little they can do. The outcomes were already unalterable before the public was aware — and that wasn’t by accident.
Paul Riccio lives in Wilton.