Coronado School of the Arts (CoSA) is a school-within-a-school located on the campus of Coronado High School

Coronado High School (Coronado, California)

Coronado High School is a National Blue Ribbon high school in Coronado, California. The school was founded in 1913 and is the only high school in the Coronado Unified School District....

 in Coronado, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. The school currently enrolls 155 students, of which nearly 70% comes from outside Coronado.

CoSA is largely an after-hours program with a focus on the arts, were students take academic courses at Coronado High School in the morning. The school offers classes in classical and contemporary dance

Contemporary dance

Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement...

, musical theater and drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

, instrumental music, technical theater, visual art, and digital media

Digital media

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...

 and filmmaking

Filmmaking

Filmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...

. It has Ph.D.s on its faculty and what the San Diego Union Tribune calls "a formidable fund-raising auxiliary", the CoSA Foundation.

History

The idea for the school materialized in 1993. The school was founded in 1996 by Kris McClung and had 60 students when it opened it doors in 1996. In 2007, CoSA unveiled a $12 million theater arts complex that includes a 650-seat main-stage theater, a black-box theater, scene shop, music and drama rooms, administrative offices, and a fly loft.

In 2005, four evacuees of Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

 relocated from the wind and rain damaged New Orleans Center for Creative Arts

New Orleans Center for Creative Arts

New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, or NOCCA, is a professional arts training center for secondary school-age children. NOCCA is located in New Orleans, Louisiana. The school offers instruction in creative writing, dance, media arts, music, theatre arts, and visual arts, with a summer culinary...

.

CoSA Departments

• Musical Theater and Drama
• Technical Theater
• New Media (Digital Arts/Film)
• Music
• Dance
• Visual Arts

Performances

The rehearsals for both "Journey to Oz" with Dance and "The Laramie Project" *The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project

The Laramie Project is a play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project about the reaction to the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard in Laramie,...

 with a mix of Musical Theatre students and other students from schools in the Coronado School District are now underway. The Laramie Project is PG-13, and recommended not to be seen by children 13 or under because of content.

CoSA Foundation

The Coronado School of the Arts Foundation provides the oversight and fundraising apparatus http://www.cosafoundation.org for CoSA. Private funding, in the form of tuition and donations, covers about half of CoSA's operating budget. The remaining money is provided by the Coronado Unified School District

Coronado Unified School District

-Mission statement:"Through rigorous academic standards, high expectations, and a coordinated curriculum, the Coronado Unified School District, in partnership with our small, involved community, will graduate students with the knowledge and skills necessary to excel in higher education, careers,...

, and through special state and federal grants.

In August 2008, Pamela Coker was appointed Executive Director for the CoSA Foundation.

External references

• Coronado School of the Arts Website