Silly Accents at the School Board Meeting

There was some serious business at Wednesday night’s schools board meeting, like an impassioned plea for raises from the educational assistant’s union. But I’m writing about that for tomorrow’s paper, and I’d rather blog about these funny kids from the Public Academy for the Performing Arts.

PAPA is a high-scoring charter school with an emphasis on the performing arts, and it is locally chartered through APS rather than through the state. They have a pretty good relationship with APS, and they are part of the APS capital master plan, meaning they are in line for a permanent facility. I’m told funds for them will be included in APS’ next bond question, which will go before voters in February. Currently, PAPA students make do with a campus comprised mainly of portables.

APS has broken ground on several charter projects lately, including a building for South Valley Academy and for Montessori of the Rio Grande, in a slow march toward getting all charters in public buildings, as required by law.

So public forum started at Wednesday’s meeting, and a teenage boy walked up to the front of the room. But instead of using the podium and microphone, he brought up a black box to stand on. If you’ve ever done theatre, it kind of looked like a box you might use to construct a minimalist set. So he stood on the box, and we were all looking at each other quizzically, and someone said, “Um, do you want to use the podium, where the microphone is?” And he said he didn’t, and a nice man from tech support gave him a hand-held microphone.

Then the boy started talking in an accent that was hard to identify. I thought it was real at first, and it was also hard to tell what his point was, other than that he loves his school. The young man talked extensively about how much his school means to him and what the school has accomplished. It wasn’t until the second speaker came forward, hopped on the box and started speaking in a theatrical accent that we all figured out the pattern, and realized the students had come to talk about what their school meant to them and how much they would like a permanent facility with a performance space.

Several students also correctly pointed out that PAPA was just named Charter School of the Year by the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools.

It was cool. I did community theatre in high school and it really meant a lot to me, so I have a soft spot for theatre types. The APS board was receptive to their performance, and these kids should get their performance space if the next bond question passes.