Board member Jocelyn Rhynard has been championing the project, Lawrence said.
Rhynard noted that the west side of Dayton has been deliberately under resourced for decades and an arts elementary school could help some of those students.
“The arts is what makes our soul sing, and I want to give that opportunity to so many more,” Rhynard said. “I would love to give it to every single child today in Dayton Public. Let’s start with one and put all of our heart and soul and resources into it.”
Lawrence and Rhynard said part of the exploration process is figuring out how much such a school will cost, along with going to other schools around the country who have implemented the model.
There will be several conversations with the community about the idea in coming months, Lawrence said, but he invited people to the community conversations he’s been hosting at some of the DPS buildings about the academic progress the district wants to make to give input on the arts elementary school.
Rhynard said people can reach out to school board members to give their feedback.
In the conversation proposing the idea, board members said they wanted to make sure that such a school was not just a feeder program for Stivers School for the Arts, DPS’s highest-rated high school.
“Hopefully all of our high schools get theater students because we have more arts at all schools, not just one specifically,” said board member Eric Walker, who was sworn in Tuesday.
Walker said the district needed to make sure they got qualified art teachers for these schools.
Will Smith, who was elected DPS school board president at the meeting Tuesday, said he liked the idea, but hoped the district would also work to improve DPS’s middle schools – something that Lawrence has made a priority in the goals he’s proposed for the district so far.
Smith said he’s talked to parents whose kids go to Horace Mann Elementary in southeast Dayton and River’s Edge Montessori just north of downtown who worry a lot about where their kids will go next.
“It’s almost like their kid is graduating high school when they’re sixth graders,” Smith said. “They’re like, alright, I got to do auditions. I got to study up so my kid can get into Stivers. If not, I got to pick up and go to CJ because they’re not going to Wogaman or E.J. Brown.”
Board member Chrisondra Goodwine echoed Smith and said she hoped to see more discussion of improvement in middle schools between January and March.
“That is our that is our pain point as a district when it comes to where we are dropping the ball and we can use some real, some real growth in those types of programs,” Goodwine said.
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