In a bustling art studio one recent morning, 18-year-old Michelle Noriega carefully sketches a bicycle propped near her easel, creating a drawing she hopes will help her get into Brooklyn's prestigious Pratt Institute.
Sitting behind a small monitor in a room next door, 16-year-old Max Glider shouts "Rolling!" and "Action!" as he directs actors in a short film using a script he and his classmates wrote; it's about a popular high school girl who befriends an outcast boy.
In nearby classrooms at the newly named Long Island High School for the Arts, guitar players pluck their way through a composition, drama majors swashbuckle with stage swords to a rousing "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtrack and dancers learn new moves in a master class.
"There's no place like this school," says Nick Baiano, another student in the film class. The students and faculty of this school, formerly named the Nassau BOCES Cultural Arts Center, call their place "Long Island's best-kept secret" -- though they want to change that. Housed in a modern white building on a quiet Syosset street, the school is a conservatory-level incubator for artists, dancers, singers, musicians, actors, writers and other
creative young people from Nassau and Suffolk counties.
A milestone and a change
Celebrating its 35th anniversary this year with a name change and an energy boost, the high school is hoping to enter its own era of "Fame."
This year, the school added a film major and an adult education program. Last year it added a new recording studio, a few years after it launched a music technology program. Over the years, says principal Ava Favara, subjects, facilities, hours and numbers of students and faculty have steadily increased.
And now, the high school even has its own school song, "LIHSA" (its new acronym, pronounced lee-sa). Music teacher Elliot Weiss wrote it in time for a ribbon-cutting ceremony last month, and dozens of students belted it out before an audience of public officials and other visitors.
"I always knew I was different/Had other dreams than all my friends ... ," they sang, .calling the school "someplace/ Where I can fit in/Where .everyone knows how it feels/ To burn from within."
And that's how they really feel, students say. Students audition or submit portfolios to get admitted. Their school district must agree to pay the tuition to send them, generally at a cost beyond that of keeping them in the home district school.
"I discovered myself over here," says Noriega, who is from Roosevelt. She is one of 22 students, out of 212 enrolled, who attends full-day, getting all her academic courses here, too. Most students attend morning or afternoon.
At a table nearby, another full-time student, junior Anna Weiss, 16, from Long Beach, finishes decorating some ceramic bells. Her academic classes are very small, with teachers always available for extra help, she says -- a perk, perhaps, of being a best-kept secret.
Largely because of the close attention from teachers, she says, she's doing better academically here, and she loves being able to spend any spare time in the art studio pursuing her own creative projects. Her mother heard of the school from a friend, she says, and the idea clicked immediately for both of them. Other students and faculty say that full and half-day students often do better here: They become more motivated, learn discipline and feel less stress,
having found a place with other artistically minded people where they "can fit in," as the school song says.
"This is the best thing I've done academically in my life," says Baiano, 16, a half-day junior from Massapequa and script supervisor for the film Glider is directing. "Back in high school, you do
things to get grades. Here, you can experiment, explore what you can do," says Baiano, who wants to be a writer. Students call teachers by their first names, and one of Baiano's favorites is Phil Asaph, who teaches writing and, between morning and afternoon sessions, coaches full-day seniors for SATs.
Among them is Keli Price, 17, of Jericho, who says being at this school has helped him, both academically and professionally, improving his acting skills. He's already had several television jobs -- including on Nickelodeon's "The Naked Brothers Band" (as Bobby Love, lead singer for the rival L.A. Surfers, with whom he'll soon cut an album).
Some students discover a new passion. Muireann "Mo" Phelan, 16, of Mineola, is a theater major who believes she's found her true calling -- in a lighting booth. "A lot of fun," she says. "I'm used to being in the show." She colors a near-empty stage in dramatic shades as she follows technical directions ("62 through 64 at 13") from her teacher, Debra Dumas.
Dumas, of Sea Cliff, is associate lighting designer for Broadway's "The Phantom of the Opera" and also teaches at Adelphi University in Garden City and Pace University in Manhattan.
Phelan's experience illustrates several of the school's strengths, says theater coordinator Abbe Gail Gross: college-level instruction, often from working professionals, the opportunity to fall in love with a craft and discover a spot where she's "practically guaranteed a job."
College is the goal
Nearly all of the school's graduates move on to arts-related careers -- but not until after college, one of the school's major objectives, says principal Favara, who has been there from its start in 1973. There's a huge emphasis on helping students win scholarships. Last year's 89 graduating seniors received more than $8 million in scholarships and grants -- about $90,000 each. They were accepted into such prestigious schools as Cornell University, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons School of Design and Boston's Berklee College of Music. During its first year, Favara says, the school offered half-day instruction to 35 students. The high school was started because responses to surveys in Nassau school districts repeatedly said they wanted an arts school. Only eight students showed up the first day, she recalls, because of bus snafus, leaving her panicked.
It's been onward and upward since. In 1985, the school moved to its present location, a former occupational education building for dental, cosmetology and printing students, redesigned to include studios and an auditorium. Soon after, it went full-day and added the academic program. She'd been lobbying for a name change practically ever since, Favara says, so the school would be recognized as a full-service high school for all Long Island.
"People would call us up and think we were a museum" when it was called "cultural arts center."
Favara sees the name change as a rebirth, and so does the school song, which puts it thus: "Our story's beginning today."
