Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Artistic Talent: Art teacher Barbara Purdy models for her students at the Presentation High School newly completed classroom theater complex, which opened Feb. 5.




Presentation High School artists get more room for their creativity

Classroom, theater complex completed for second semester

By Kate Carter

Fine and performing arts students at Presentation High School received a building constructed just for them when the doors to the campus' new arts complex opened Feb. 5.

Construction on the 17,000-square-foot addition, which includes classrooms, an indoor theater and an outdoor amphitheater, began last spring. The classrooms and amphitheater were completed just after the all-girls school's second semester began this year, only about one month behind schedule. The indoor theater should be done by March, in time for the school's April production of The Wizard of Oz.

"We always had really talented girls, but not really the program to match in the fine arts," says Principal Mary Miller. "That's our aim, to make them bigger."

The new facility includes top-of-the-line production equipment, performance space and technology for computer design and publishing, acoustics and studio music recording, she says. It also provides more space for the school of about 700 students to expand its arts program and house classes that didn't have rooms of their own.

The building on the south side of the Plummer Avenue campus is three stories, with the bottom story located in the basement. It holds three generic classrooms, one computer laboratory equipped with 32 flat-screen computers and technology for digital photography and design, a ceramics lab, an art studio, a music studio with 20 keyboards and a recording studio. The recording studio will allow students interested in pursuing music in college to create compact discs of their performances at school.

When the 250-seat theater is completed, it will "look like a little repertory," Miller says, with riggings, a catwalk and sound and lighting control booths.

"When you're going to spend that kind of money, you might as well do it right," she says.


Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Artists at Work: Presentation High School students Katie Van Damelen, 15, and Jamie Gorostiza, 16, are among the many students who will use the new Classroom Theater Complex to improve their artistic skills.




The whole project costs $7.5 million, of which the school has raised a little more than $6 million. It is continuing to raise the rest of the money by "selling" the theater seats to donors for $5,000 each; it has 150 still available. The school is also holding a major donor dinner March 23, a gala opening April 9 and a dedication by Bishop Patrick McGrath of the San Jose Diocese April 11.

Miller says tuition increases are not related to the funding of the new construction.

The school requires its students to take one year of a single art form, and with the new building, students' options have increased dramatically. The school had never had a keyboard class before, and now students don't have to compete for space to do ceramics in the same place they do photography.

The school has been hiring additional part-time staff over the past two years in preparation for the additional class offerings. Some of the staff could become full-time to handle the increased teaching load.

The arts complex is just the first in the school's three-phase long-range building plan. The next phase will be to build a swimming pool and soccer field on the Booksin Avenue side of the campus and remove the tennis courts. The field would permit the school's soccer, swimming and water polo teams to practice on campus and would allow it to add a field hockey team.

The third phase would update the campus' existing buildings; replacing outdated heaters and adding air conditioning; adding space to the student center; and possibly expanding into the school's large front lawn space. Miller says the projects are just in the conceptual planning stages right now.

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For more information about donating to the new construction, call the school's development office at 408.264.5110, ext. 47.

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