Guaspari’s Triumph was, In Reality, A Collective One
By Deborah Meier

I enjoyed the message of Marie Holmes’ article, “Guaspari Makes Music in Harlem” (Education Update October, 2002). Roberta Guaspari is a musician worth honoring and the work she is still doing deserves widespread recognition.

But the work of school change could also use the truth! And the truth may have its own virtues, anyhow.

In fact, Roberta Guaspari’s work has taken place in the context of three schools—all of them rather remarkable places—and all of them noted for their heavy investment in the arts, and in music: the Central Park East schools. They are a story of the collective triumph of the love of art and good education, and one that has spawned dozens and dozens of copycats in New York City and across the nation.

In fact, it was a triumph that depended also on the existence of a network of schools and an unusually creative district (itself the subject of a wonderful book entitled The Miracle in East Harlem). When the first of the Central Park East schools offered Roberta Guaspari a home, they knew it would be tough going, and they were responsible for making it financially feasible. It was a united effort that saved us, time after time, from seriously undermining our work in the arts—or Roberta’s program.

At Central Park East I (featured in the film Music of the Heart) the school, for 26 of its 27 years, has had another full-time music teacher, Barry Soloway, and he was not and is not the villain portrayed in the film. His job was not threatened by the 1991 cuts, but not because he had more tenure, as the film implies, but because the school’s families, staff and kids wanted Soloway first and foremost. He did not simply teach only 30 or 40 kids, but every single child in the school, in regular music classes, plus three choruses; he produced an annual opera and gave recorder classes for all the older kids. His chorus sang throughout the city, worked with world-famous choirs and made numerous recordings of their work. Like the other sister schools, Central Park East also needed to protect a full-time art teacher and art room! Each of the three sister schools managed to devote nearly two positions to the arts for student populations of under 200. In short, we had the equivalent of five art teachers between us—teaching about 600 kids. One of these was Roberta. We were all determined to find a way to keep Roberta—who taught over 100 children in our three schools to love and fall in love with the violin—without losing any other valuable art program that benefited our children’s lives. Managing to pull this off was a community-wide triumph.

Even if it never had an impact on “academic performance,” music, dance and the arts are central disciplines for all of our children and must be protected. Roberta is dead right about that.

The three schools she worked with were all inventions of a group of extraordinary teachers—starting in 1974 with the creation of Central Park East I. And all three schools still thrive today because they are examples of whole communities insisting on doing what’s right and creating precedents that have outlasted their founders. Roberta was and is one great teacher within three very great little communities, which have a lesson to teach about music and the good life. Studies done about Central Park East schools have discovered that with pretty much the same budget as all other schools, the kids have a substantially greater shot at graduating high school and going to college; interviews suggest that many features contribute to this, including music.

Why do we have the tendency to simplify important stories by turning them into individual triumphs rather than collective ones? The latter is actually even more helpful. It’s the real “education update” story that needs repeating.#

Deborah Meier is former teacher—director of Central Park East School (1975–85), co-principal of the Central Park East Secondary School and currently (1997-) co-principal of Mission Hill School, a public school in Boston’s Roxbury community.