Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy
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Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy, or SASA, is a small public high school and middle school. It is considered to be a magnet school, and it maintains high test scores in the Mid-Michigan Tri-Cities Region. Enrollment is approximately 600 students overall.
SASA's concentration program is unusual, even for a magnet school. Middle school concentration programs include Global Studies/Language Arts, Voice/Keyboard, 2-D Art, 3-D Art, Dance, Math/Science. High school concentrations include Global Studies, Math/Science, Language Arts, Voice/Keyboard, 2-D Art, 3-D Art, Dance, and Theatre. Due to budget cuts, the Middle school Theater concentration has been suspended for an unknown duration, but it may be reinstated by the 2006-07 school year, in a statement released by the principal.
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[edit] History
The Saginaw Arts & Sciences Academy is located in a building that originally housed a Montgomery Ward department store. In the early 1980s, the school district of the city of Saginaw purchased the building and announced plans to convert it into a half-day specialized high-school and middle-school program for advanced students called the Center for the Arts & Sciences (CAS). At the time the announcement was made to the local press, district spokesman Michael Manley recalled that discarded mannequins still filled the building. New dividing walls were constructed to create classrooms, although the fact that the building was originally a department store is still somewhat apparent (especially because of the lack of windows).
During the 1980s and 1990s, the CAS shared its building with the Ruben Daniels Center for Lifelong Education, an adult and alternative high school also run by the Saginaw School district. The CAS met with surprising success, and began drawing students from throughout the Saginaw-valley area, including Saginaw, Bay, and Midland counties.
In the late 1990s, a committee of students, parents, and teachers began a campaign to expand the school to include a full-day option. This committee took on the name "The River School Project", owing to the school's location on the banks of the Saginaw River near downtown Saginaw. Although the committee met with much doubt and resistance, support gradually built, and after several meetings the Saginaw School Board eventually unanimously approved plans to expand the school and change the name to the Saginaw Arts & Sciences Academy. In 1999, full-day programs were added for the 9th and 10th grade, with the 11th grade following in 2000, and the 12th grade in 2001. The school initially had far fewer full-day students than half-day, but since the early days of the full-day program, full-time enrollment has greatly expanded.
The history of CAS/SASA would not be complete without the mention of outstanding principal Mr. Birdsall. During the nineties, U of M alum Mr. Birdsall would strike awe in the hearts of the incoming students during his welcoming speech. He emphasized respect, and once he retired, the halls of CAS/SASA seemed to get a little louder, a little rowdier. He also ran Driver's Ed on the site during the summer.
[edit] Accolades
SASA students have repeatedly performed well in standardized tests, art, sciences, math and more. SASA typically has a handful of students represented at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair every year, and the school has produced two grand award winners, as well as dozens of students who have placed at ISEF. In the 2001 TEAMS engineering competition, SASA's team scored highest nationally. The school has well-regarded math competition teams, and participation in certain competitions such as the American Mathematics Contest and the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition is mandatory for all students in the Math/Science concentration. The school's Model United Nations club, one of the longest-running organizations at the school, has become very successful, recently. In the past two years, SASAMUN has won 7 best delegate awards, and 6 best delegation awards at regional/national conferences. The school's arts programs are especially well-designed and developed and usually send an impressive delegation to the Michigan Youth Arts Festival, and several of the school's visual artists have won national art competitions. Finally, the school publishes an annual literary magazine, ICONS, which is edited and run entirely by students. Icons has won numerous awards of excellence from Columbia Scholastic Press.
SASA is also the site of the Saginaw County Science and Engineering Fair. Participation in this event is a requirement for students in the Math/Science Concentration, but other students may apply if they wish.
[edit] Student Culture
The SASA student body is extremely diverse. There are students from both working class and wealthy families, and the school's racial makeup is also very mixed. SASA draws students from both the East and West sides of Saginaw city (traditionally the province of Saginaw High School and Arthur Hill High School, respectively), as well as outlying suburbs, and the cities of Bay City and Midland to name only a few.
The school's athletics programs are limited in scope, but have grown in recent years to affiliate with the Inter-State Athletic Conference/ISAC for varsity boys and girls sports in basketball and soccer and girls volleyball. For some major sports (including football, and baseball) students elect to attend SASA for the half-day program and play on their home school's team.
Nevertheless, SASA has its own distinct student culture with a number of unique traditions. There are friendly rivalries between some of the concentration programs (Math/Science and Global Studies/Language Arts in particular), and students are known to have heated discussions about politics and contemporary issues, which the school encourages through its many cross-curricular activities. The school also has a "Living Arts" program, where various artists and intellectuals are invited to address the student body as a whole.
During the winter holiday season, the school has a "winter holidays around the world" festival, during which small student groups research the customs of a particular country, and set up a booth showcasing seasonal holidays and traditions of that country. Students are known to particularly enjoy the many regional foods that are made for the festival.
Recent changes in policy in the Saginaw Public School District have been met with various attitudes from SASA students. A recent amendment to the district dress-code policy has altered the usual lax environment to a 'business casual' code. The proscription of hooded sweatshirts "hoodies" and compulsory 'tucking' have been met with resistance, however, it appears that academic resolve remains supreme. The dress code is mostly considered unfair, with many students in the school and elsewhere violating the code by wearing hooded sweatshirts, cargo pants,and short skirts among others.
Student life has advanced well beyond the orignating days of SASA. While it once was a unique school, several teachers, students, and administrators have been trying to create SASA into a "real school". This has been done by adding several things a "real school" would have. A winter formal dance held in February of 2006, similar to nearby high schools Arthur Hill High School and Saginaw High. SASA has also instituted a prom, student council, and the potential of a homecoming at the next school year.
[edit] Disadvantages and Recent Disatisfaction
Some have begun to doubt the 'magnet school' reputation of SASA. They cite the retirement of some of the better teachers, the decreasing quality of the students with the addition of a middle school, and a very poor facility. Still, the school continues to have a reputation for winning awards on the local, regional and national level.
It wouldn't be fair to disregard the spreading contempt of the Saginaw Public School Board among many SASA pupils. This stems from many incidents that the students feel wrong done by. These include, among others, a bottom of the table slating for facility improvements despite the overall superiority of the academic interest and accomplishment, the closing of campus due to accidents and incidents at other schools, the dress code implications also incurred chiefly by other schools, and a lack of understanding, familiarity, or even simple interest in the school from the members of the Board. The numerous, almost bimonthly articles in the Saginaw News praising school accomplishments continue to be ignored in favor of territorial upbringing and favoritism (as is overwhelmingly prevalent in Saginaw) towards "real schools with real problems." The general feeling among SASA students appears to be that the Board and teachers of other schools do not encourage students as they do at SASA and also did not enforce the former dress code, which consisted of administrative good-judgement instead of a ridged rubric.
The lack of good facilities including a gym, a field, a genuine basketball court, windows, an auditorium, science laborotories, and a better suited library tend to stifle many extra curricular and academic pursuits pupils may wish to explore, tending to deflect a lot of potential students. Being scheduled last on the list of schools to be renovated in the next few years strongly suppresses any hope of improvement for current enrollees. There is a funding problem that also smothers the availability of class choices because there isn't money to hire teachers, and many programs within the school have started their own fundraising schemes to provide what the District cannot. Two such institutions are the band program, which sells fudge to buy instruments and fund trips to competitions, and Feldmart, a comestible store run by a teacher (Brian Feldman) to fund eighth grade class trips to Washington, D.C. The student body is inclined to finger the citizens of Saginaw for more negligence than the School Board, because they failed to vote in a bill that would increase taxes for education. They also feel that the town has been greedy in also declining to vote in many safety millages over the years to repair the police force after a long run of attrition which resulted in the extremely high crime and especially murder per capita rate that feeds the biases Saginaw has long harbored.
A gap of communication between students and administration led to a planned cutting of Winter Holidays Around the World and funding for Model United Nations. Fortunately, the close-knit students came together to rationally protest to the Principal, resulting in the re-instatement of the activities and funding. Unfortunately, for some students who attempted to re-introduce a golf team, it was not possible because of an apparent lack of interest from the Assistant Principal and Athletic Coordinator, in favor of a soccer team said students explained would have no interest, participants, or a coach for the following year. They were correct, and it is believed that the Vice-Principal was aware and simply did not wish to individually schedule matches. Incidentally, by the time this was realized it was too late to direct funding and the teacher who had offered to coach the team accepted a coaching position at another school (a significant blow, because he ended up coaching a would-be opponent). Of course, the students plan to take things into their own hands as usual and begin an independent club, because a sponser and school funding are not available. Hopefully, the 2007-2008 school year will see a team with a coach. Yet despite all hardship the students remain hopeful, and for the most part, every bit as glad to be there as the day they arrived.
