Welcome Message

Timothy Farson, Principal

Dear SDSCPA Students, Teachers, and Families:

Welcome to the San Diego School of Creative & Performing Art—an arts focused public magnet school for artistically passionate students in grades 6-12 located in Southeastern San Diego. At SDSCPA we nurture excellence in arts and academics through a rigorous dual curriculum. Our students must be extremely dedicated and willing to persevere through challenges, failures, opportunities and successes.

This school is different, and when you set foot on our campus, you will feel it. Each day we create a learning environment united by a passion for the transformative nature of the arts and inspired by opportunities to provide the depth, rigor, and intensity of artistic and academic instruction in preparation for post-secondary opportunities—whether pre-conservatory or university. It is a school excited by the artistic and scholarly processes of inquiry, discovery, and creation as each day we weave artistic and scholarly discourse using the universal language of art.

At SDSCPA, the arts are not an "elective." They are a core and essential area of study. Students do not just perform or create—they live through their performance or creation. It is their existential voice and way to interact with the world. SDSCPA tirelessly creates a space where students feel safe to create, explore, and discover. Students are encouraged to be courageous in telling stories through choreography, with pencil, camera or voice.

We pride ourselves in our ability to unite many walks of life, beliefs through a culturally relevant curriculum. We strive to create classrooms where students are alive with collaboration, intellectual discourse, and problem solving. We recognize that our students are unique thinkers and use the arts to harness the persity in our young thinkers.

We are committed to always improving. We strive to become the leading public arts focused school in the nation. In 2016, SDSCPA was ranked in the top 3% of American Public High Schools in the US News World Report. We are also striving to become a nationally accredited public arts high school—1 of 15 in the nation. This will require new partnerships, new resources, and a committed community who believes in the power of a free public arts education.

I look forward to engaging the San Diego community and nation as we build upon the dream of our founder, Florence Johnson, nearly 37 years ago.

Inspired,

Timothy E. Farson
Principal, San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts

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