Exploring the role of a cultural arts program in empowering an urban school community in sustaining their neighborhood school and the value of cultural arts to kindergarten through eighth grade African-American students

According to leading educators, the arts are a fundamental component to a well-rounded education, yet school curriculum decision-makers have been obliterating the cultural arts in many urban schools in America and rendering arts and music programs a mere add-on. The academic benefit of music, art, dance, and theater exposure and participation in school are significant, but the character-building effects on a child's development are equally as valuable, especially for urban students. The empowering effects of cultural arts on the urban student and his or her school community are examined in this phenomenological study of the E. M. Stanton School, a public K-8 school in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.;The school community mobilized as the Supporters of Stanton (S.O.S.), a group of committed stakeholders vested in the fight to save the school from a planned closure. Through well-formulated counterproposals, organized assiduousness, and a unique inclusion of the school's Cultural Arts program into public presentations and testimony, the E. M. Stanton School prevented its seemingly inevitable closure. Participant interviews and information analysis examined the role of a cultural arts program in empowering an urban school community to sustain their neighborhood school and the value of cultural arts to kindergarten through eighth grade African-American students.