Like a lot of artists in Chicago, Free Street Theater artistic director Ron Bieganski has some experience teaching in the Chicago Public Schools. What he’s seen there over the years convinced him that he’d like something different for his own son, Marcel. This year, when Marcel turned five and kindergarten was looming, Bieganski began thinking seriously about creating a public school alternative. Free Street trains teenagers in experimental writing and theater, so it wasn’t a huge leap for him to imagine that if he pulled together a group of like-minded parents and a minimum of ten students, they could start their own art-centered, creativity-nourishing microschool.
His buddy Bryan Saner, of the Goat Island performance group, was part of a similar initiative—the Sunflower Community School—from 1996 to 2005. Sunflower was a co-op of 10 or 12 families, with Saner’s wife, Teresa Pankratz, as director and all the parents as part-time faculty. Saner was trying to recapture the experience he’d had attending a one-room school in South Dakota; others wanted to apply their training in Montessori and Waldorf School methods.
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Having heard that story from folks who should know, I’m now told that the intermission chat never happened. But the Diversity Workshop Group did, thanks to support from the Elizabeth Morse charitable trusts. And now so will the school. The Chicago High School for the Arts is slated to open in fall 2009. Last month Jose Ochoa came on board as its executive director and first employee.
Ochoa says the outpouring of support is “more than impressive”: 90 local arts organizations have signed on as partners, promising everything from help with auditions to internships for graduates.v
