Main point: “…the school’s star-making machinery, which cranked out hundreds of renowned actors, musicians and artists for more than 80 years, seems to have ground to a halt.”
More about it:
- “Since its 1936 founding as the city’s first public high school for artistically gifted students, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School Of Music & Art and Performing Arts has educated generations of top actors, dancers, singers, musicians and visual artists — from Liza Minnelli, Eartha Kitt and Robert De Niro to Jennifer Aniston, Adrien Brody and Nicki Minaj.”
- “Over the last decade, applications to the world-famous ‘Fame school’ plummeted by 73 percent, from more than 15,000 in 2012 to less than 5,000 in 2019 and 2020, as competition for seats in other top-ranked high schools held steady.”
- “LaGuardia’s enrollment dropped by 19% between 2019 and 2021 — the only one of the city’s nine elite specialized high schools to lose students during the pandemic shutdown. The decline triggered a $1.25 million cash infusion from the Department of Education to paper over a yawning budget gap.”
- “A toxic brew of internal conflict, extreme policy shifts under two principals with polar-opposite plans, a snobbish refusal to recruit fresh talent, and even the rise of TikTok has battered LaGuardia’s prestige, insiders say.”
Why it matters:
- Young people with artistic talent searching for elite training seem to be looking elsewhere.
- The dual mission of arts and academics appears to be hard to balance. Should the school be one or the other?