By Brian Lockhart
When Larry Dobens began teaching at PS 209 in Whitestone in 1997, he said his classroom had everything a visual arts instructor could desire – a sink, plenty of storage space and good lighting.
Three years later, Dobens, who has been assigned to PS 209 through the non-profit Studio in a School program, teaches in a converted room in the basement.
Gone are his sink, storage space and good lighting.
“It's a great school, but I can't do what I normally could do with them because of the space,” Dobens said.
PS 209 is in School District 25, which was cited in 1999 by President Clinton's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as a model for school districts across the country that value arts education.
Dobens' situation exemplifies how crowded schools even in Queens' strongest arts education district struggle to expose students to arts while squeezing the most classroom space out of their buildings.
Sharon Dunn, who was at the forefront of bringing the arts back to District 25 in the early 1990s and is now the senior assistant for the arts for the city's public schools, said space is the major factor affecting the future of Queens' arts education.
“It looks very good in terms of the will and the desire and the funding,” Dunn said. “What doesn't look so good is the space.”
A 1999 public school overcrowding report issued by city Public Advocate Mark Green found only nine of the 43 city schools analyzed had art rooms and those were considered expendable.
Dunn said Queens was between “a rock and a hard place” because while space for arts is important to learning, so are smaller class sizes.
A lack of permanent instructional space does not mean Queens' students have no arts exposure. Dunn said kindergarten through third-grade teachers are required to spend 20 percent of their instruction time on arts education and fourth- through sixth-grade teachers 10 percent, often by integrating the arts with studies of other subjects.
Dunn said junior high school students are required to take one year each of two art forms – visual, theater, dance or music – and high schoolers take one semester of basic art or music. High schools are required to offer sequential programs for students who wish to major in art at college.
There are also a variety of funding sources and creative uses of space, which can bring the arts to all students.
However, many arts instructors like Dobens believe less-than-ideal conditions limit the quality of arts education.
Studio in a School, which pays for 90 percent of Dobens' services to PS 209, sets up art teachers in permanent classrooms for five years. Ideally, once the five years are up, classes continue to make use of the art studio and even hire the Studio staff member.
“That's a real problem in Queens schools because they don't have the room,” said Fran Van Horn, Studio's deputy executive director. The nonprofit was established more than two decades ago by Museum of Modern Art President Agnes Gund.
Dobens said being moved to PS 209's basement has hurt his program because the lack of sinks forces him to “truck water” by hand into his classroom or do without, which inhibits painting and paper mache projects.
Lack of storage and display space has also been a problem.
“I would have several classes do paper mache projects,” said Dobens. “Now I'll only do one because I don't have any place to put anything.”
Dunn said the arts are best taught through lengthy projects which require storage space.
“Because teachers have no room, they have to do something the children can take home today,” Dunn said. “So students never get a sense of working on a project over time. It's never going to be big, it's never going to be complicated and it's never going to push you to go beyond limited boundaries.”
Renovating basements and other out-of-the-way spaces for the arts may not always be an ideal solution, but it is a common practice in Queens schools and preferable to losing arts space altogether.
How are arts programs provided when permanent studio space is eliminated?
Green's report said outside agencies and teachers are then forced to provide mobile services and bring the arts directly into individual classrooms, a far from ideal situation.
This winter the Irondale Theater Ensemble, which teaches improvisation and theater games, has had residencies at JHS 194 in Whitestone and JHS 189 in Flushing.
In both cases, overcrowding has affected the programs, said Kenneth Rothchild, Irondale's associate artistic director.
He said the ensemble was invited to run performances and workshops at JHS 194 often with a ratio of one instructor to 100 students.
“It's really crowd management at that point,” Rothchild said.
He said the size of some classrooms at JHS 189 has made theater games requiring movement practically impossible because there is no space to move furniture.
Elsewhere in District 25, at PS 107 in Flushing, Virginia Pamboukes will soon be trading her cart in for a classroom.
Pamboukes, PS 107's art teacher, routinely moves from room to room a black cart piled high with a variety of art materials. She shares her narrow office space with three other teachers.
Come fall, however, she will have a brand new art classroom, the result of a building project that will transform the school's cafeteria into a variety of rooms.
The art classroom was made possible through the efforts of PS 107's principal, James Phair, who has found several creative ways to use space in his school, including converting an unused gym shower for visiting dancers, musicians and the school's strings students.
Aside from the storage space, Pamboukes said the biggest benefit of having her own classroom will be the amount of time it will add to her courses.
Green's report said a typical art lesson should be 45 minutes long but is reduced to about 35 minutes for teachers like Pamboukes because they have to use lesson time for setup, cleanup and travel.
As has been the case, however, there is no guarantee that Pamboukes' art room will not eventually be converted into regular classroom space.
“I'm hoping I'll have it forever,” said Pamboukes, “but who knows? That's out of my control.”
