Being a school focused on both art and academics is Baltimore School for the Arts’ most important factor, but having so much to balance creates some challenges. 

Planning for midterm exams, arts’ midterms “Juries,” and incoming prospective student’s auditions is one of the main challenges for the school. All three happen at the same time—during the first few weeks of January. 

In previous years, midterm exams and juries would take place over the course of one week. The following week, students have had a week off to give space to art teachers holding auditions for their specific department. 

After returning from the virtual 2020-2021 Covid school year, the school utilized asynchronous school days, where current students stayed at home but still received work from teachers while audition week took place in the building. 

This year, however, midterms and auditions are taking place over the span of two weeks, from Thursday, January 11 to the following Friday, January 19, while juries are being held both before and during that period. There is no distinguished week for each, and most noticeably, there is no week off for current students. 

So what factors resulted in this new, merged schedule? And what other changes can be expected?

One of the major factors is the new, stricter enforcement of policies from the Baltimore City School District. 

“There’s a lot more oversight from the district in everything this year, what is being taught, what testing’s being submitted, everything,” says Valerie Johnson, a government teacher at BSA. 

The state guidelines require 180 instructional days a year, and taking a week off for audition week would be below that requirement. In addition, MSDE now requires prior approval for asynchronous instruction to count toward a student’s school year. This is why other asynchronous days are built in to the approved BCPSS district calendar.

Audition week has never been part of the BCPSS calendar, and as long as the school calls itself a part of Baltimore City Public Schools, it had to change its plans accordingly. 

“We have always flown under the city’s radar. It always just kind of seemed like people thought ‘BSA does what BSA does,’” explains Thomas Askey, assistant principal for academics at BSA. 

“But bureaucracies change, and I think we knew at some point what we were doing wasn’t going to be allowed anymore,” Askey states. 

Each year the school has been trying to find a solution for this problem. It has been handled in many different ways, with classes going on during juries, auditions, or just giving time off. 

“This year, there was a major issue with having no student classes during audition week. Audition week is not a city calendar item, and every year there has been a different approach in terms of, is it just a week off? Are midterms the same time? And dealing with the real need for arts teachers to be able to focus on the audition process,” says Joy Bacon, an English teacher who has a role in the scheduling process for the school. (Editor’s note: Joy Bacon was interviewed separately than her role as faculty adviser for The Muse).

After the school moved online due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the “asynchronous” days became both useful and popular for not only BSA, but many other Baltimore City schools. 

For BSA, it seemed like a perfect solution to the school’s audition and midterm week dilemma. Students would be out of the building, still learning, and teachers could conduct auditions to make sure the school would have a talented upcoming freshman class. But all that changed this year. 

“Last year we were able to work with Baltimore City and say ‘We want these audition days to be asynchronous instruction for the high school.’ Now because of other changes for the asynchronous process, all of that would have been taken through the state,” says Bacon.

These rules severely limited the flexibility that previous asynchronous days gave the school.

“On a school level, we cannot make the decision to do asynchronous days without running afoul of what the district and state mandates are,” says Askey.

The merge of audition and midterm week is disappointing to some, who utilized and enjoyed a week out of school.

“As an academic teacher, not having a dedicated week to plan the rest of my year is a con. But midterms already allow me flexibility in the afternoon,” says Bacon.

Sophomore Leo Pevsner states their opinion: “With the pressure of juggling exams and arts juries I think the audition week break is a great privilege. It’s really worked the past few years so this change sucks. Also, I can’t see hundreds of students being in the building being helpful for auditions or focus at all.” 

However, opinions differ throughout the school. 

“The loss of time always stinks [in referral to taking a week off for auditions], I think what I teach is super important so I don’t like to lose any time, but there’s also lots of benefits in terms of stress level, and I appreciate them as well,” voices Johnson.

Even though the schedule is new, none of the individual midterms, juries, or auditions will be affected much. One notable difference is because of auditions and midterms overlapping, student volunteers may not be able to help out in their given art department’s auditions, a community service opportunity that has existed in years prior. 

“The only difference in the music department, maybe all art departments, is just that students don’t have the chance to help out and I know they really enjoy that,” states Mellasenah Edwards, the Music Department head.

Moving forward in the music department, the student volunteers will be replaced with part-time teachers. 

Due to many factors, the new, combined, midterm schedule will be put into action in the coming weeks, with a few changes, and varying opinions on the subject.

To contact this writer, email Muse Newspaper at musebsa@bsfa.org.

Featured photo of Assistant Principal Tom Askey captured by Asad Ali for the BSA Muse.