The Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

alternative high school Alternative High School (AHS) is a public senior high (secondary) school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada; which teaches grades 10 through 12. AHS is currently located at the Clinton Ford Centre, which was home to the former Clinton Ford Elementary Sc ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, United States. It was established in 1982 and is part of the San Francisco Unified School District.

History

For many years,

Ruth Asawa Ruth Aiko Asawa (January 24, 1926 – August 5, 2013) was an American modernist sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.< ...

, sculptor and passionate advocate for arts in education, as well as others had campaigned to start a public high school in San Francisco devoted to the arts, with the ultimate goal of such a school to be located in the arts corridor in the heart of San Francisco's Civic Center. At its inception in 1982, School of the Arts was created as a part of J. Eugene McAteer High School, on its present site on Portola Drive. Ten years later, in 1992, the school - now a full-fledged public school separate from McAteer - was relocated to the former SFUSD Frederick Burke Elementary School at 700 Font Boulevard on the campus of

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...

. Due to the dissolution of McAteer High School in 2002, SOTA was offered to return to the more appropriate, fully equipped high school site. The school community elected to make this move, with the understanding that the school would eventually be situated in the

Civic Center A civic center or civic centre is a prominent land area within a community that is constructed to be its focal point or center. It usually contains one or more dominant public buildings, which may also include a government building. Recently, the ...

. In 2005 a new public high school, the Academy of Arts and Sciences, was started and given space on the McAteer campus. Although it shares the campus with the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, it is a completely separate school. Now called The Academy - San Francisco @ McAteer, it admits students through the normal high school admissions process. In 2010, School of the Arts was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in honor of

. In 2011, the school was recognized as a " California Distinguished School" by the California Department of Education as one of the state's most "exemplary and inspiring" public schools, demonstrating significant gains in narrowing the achievement gap among its students.

Admissions process

Ruth Asawa School of the Arts offers visual and performing art classes daily in addition to a rigorous college preparatory curriculum. Students audition for placement in one department only. Auditioning students are admitted based on audition results; no academic criteria are used. Arts departments include Architecture & Design, Band, Creative Writing, Dance - Ballet + Modern, Guitar, Media + Film Arts, Musical Theatre, Orchestra, Piano, Spoken Arts, Theater Technology (Stagecraft or Costume + Fashion Design), Theatre Arts, Visual Arts, Vocal Music, World Dance, and World Music. Auditions are held in February for placement the following school year. About 200 students are accepted. Ruth Asawa School of the Arts application process is different from other SFUSD high schools. Applicants must apply to both the school site and the San Francisco Unified School District. . Ruth Asawa SOTA field

Alumni

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References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Asawa, Ruth School Public high schools in San Francisco Art schools in San Francisco San Francisco Unified School District schools Alternative schools in California Educational institutions established in 1982 1982 establishments in California