Arts education, which includes visual arts, music, drama, and media arts, is an important part of a well-rounded education. This newsletter serves to highlight the amazing work with the arts being done by school districts within our county.

The CDE is in the process of developing an arts framework. The draft has been released and is open for public comment until March 30th. To view the draft framework and learn more, visit the CDE site.

Akers School, a K-8 school which is part of Central Union School District, is committed to educating the whole child and fine arts is part of the expected curriculum at Akers. All students in grades 1st through 8th grade have Art as part of their schedule. Akers School will have 22 pieces of art from grades 1-8 that will be featured in the Young Masters’ Art Show this year, which is held at the Kings Art Center from Sunday, March 1st to Friday, March 20th.

Students at Armona Elementary, part of Armona Union Elementary School District, partnered with the Kings Art Center to take advantage of interactive video conferences offered to sites. This has been an ongoing arts opportunity throughout the school year. Each interactive video conference offers a different arts focus.

Avenal Elementary School, which is part of Reef-Sunset Unified School District, has hosted four family art nights so far this year. Families are invited to create art with their children at the events. The site has also held a Multicultural Performance Festival, which took place in November, 2019. Each grade level presented a different cultural dance. Later this year, they will be hosting an Art Gallery Night, where students will display artwork publicly for the community to enjoy as well as conducting a musical and installing a school rock garden with student created rock art. Avenal Elementary has been a Turnaround Arts school for the past five years and has made art a part of everyday school life.

Hanford High School, part of Hanford Joint Union High School District, currently has student art work from their Art 2 and Art 3 courses on display. Art 2 has been working on portraits as well as an independent art assignment where they were able to self-select the subject matter and medium. Art 3 has been working with mixed medium projects using watercolor and ink. Students also can enjoy arts offerings from courses such as AP art 2-D and 3-D, Ceramics, and Art 1. Student work from the various offerings can be viewed in the galleries below.

Hanford West High School, part of Hanford Joint Union High School District, will be presenting the classic musical Oklahoma at the beginning of March. Students have been working hard to prepare. They would like to invite the public to enjoy Rodgers and Hammersteins' first musical. It is sure to be a toe tappin' good time!

This year, the Hanford Elementary School District is implementing a program called the Wednesday Leadership Project. It is a grant funded program with an aim to increase student engagement and improve attendance. As its name suggests, WLP happens on Wednesdays after school at both Woodrow Wilson and John F. Kennedy Jr high. The project focuses on academics and tutoring, bringing in public speakers from the community, as well as art making. The art portion is truly exciting and has an enormous potential for impacting students and the community. Students in the program are planning to paint life size cows, pigs and goats to be displayed at each of Hanford’s six main parks. The idea is akin to “Cows on Parade”, in that the animals are painted by artists and displayed in a public space.

Themes for the livestock include the artists, Georgia O’Keefe, Grant Wood, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Romero Britto (who has participated in the real “Cows on Parade”). Hanford is known for a working carousel at its Civic park. One of the cows will be placed near the carousel and painted in the style of a carousel horse.

Student artists involved in WLP are very excited to have their artwork prominently displayed around town. As of February, the animals are being treated with a base coat of paint. Each week, students led by art teachers, Lauren Franco, Carla Bode, and Chad Nielsen, will be busily painting their animals. Installation in the parks is planned for early May. This ambitious project is ultimately a collaborative effort all around between HESD, the city of Hanford’s Parks and Rec. department, teachers, community members, and of course, the student artists!

The Patriot Jazz Band from Liberty Middle School in Lemoore is just one of the many highlights of the music department at Liberty. This group is more like a club as it is an ungraded class. It meets at 7:00am on a daily basis as a zero period class before school starts. One might think this would deter middle school students from wanting to join. However, year after year, this group keeps right on growing. A standard jazz ensemble consists of a saxophone section, trumpet section, and trombone section, which are everyday instruments that you can find at most school programs in Kings County. However, it also involves a “rhythm section”, which is made up of a piano, bass guitar, and drums. This year due to the number of students involved, the jazz band has had to split into two jazz bands, with each jazz band consisting of over 20 students. The director of this group, Chris Morshead, has been teaching the jazz band for the last 12 years. He attributes the success of the group to the music itself. “Jazz, latin, rock, funk… This music excites kids and gets them passionate about wanting to learn this great style of music,” he said. He also stated that parent support has been huge and thanks them for helping get their kids to school in the morning. The Liberty Jazz Band has traveled all over the central valley playing concerts, events, and festivals. They have also been awarded a Superior Rating at the CMEA Jazz Festival in Hanford for 8 of the last 10 years. They are looking forward to a great year and many more years of success.

Neutra Elementary School, part of Central Union School District, encouraged students and teachers to use art to support kindness. National Kindness Week was from February 17-21 and was celebrated in schools across the country. This year, the theme was "Be a Rainbow in Someone's Cloud". Students in TK-5th created kindness cards, which were turned into a rainbow collage. The most noticeable display of kindness was the brightly decorated doors across campus. Each class took part in designing and implementing their door display and helped to present their designs to judges during the week. The week also included kindness challenges and dress up days.

The Pioneer Middle School art program, which is part of Pioneer Union Elementary School District, has been working on a variety of fun projects this month that encourage our students to explore spaces of realism and total abstraction. Most recently in Advanced Art, students have started dipping their feet into 3D media by constructing large papier-mâché panthers. Each one has its own unique theme and personality. The 7th grade art students are exploring times in history and analyzing how art has changed and evolved over time. Finally everyone participated in the great kindness challenge a few weeks back by painting and hiding rocks around campus that could brighten up someone’s day.

Kings County Office of Education will release our next arts update April 22nd. Submissions may be sent to Liz Norris. Districts and sites are responsible for verifying that photos may be publicly released. Photos should be submitted in groupings of three due to the gallery format of S'more. Videos of live performances may also be accepted.