When Coppell Colorguard sophomore Aryahi Ravi dances while tossing her flag during rehearsal, she can’t help but wish for a larger practice space.
With Coppell High School fine arts programs increasing in size, cramped conditions raise safety concerns and logistical challenges.
From the 2023 $321 million bond approved in May, a 46,593-square foot fine arts building will be built at CHS to address space concerns and provide for growing programs.
$18,575,264 is allocated to the building, including $928,763 for contingency. These allowances prevent taxpayer money from being used if unforeseen changes arise.
To determine costs, the Coppell Bond Oversight Committee is considering spatial requirements necessary to adequately support fine arts programs.
“We first started not necessarily with budget but with square footage,” fine arts director Gerry Miller said. “What we do is go ‘All right, this is how many students need to be in the building’ and we work with our architect to identify with how many students can fit in the building.”
Band and choir programs will benefit from larger, acoustically designed spaces, while the dance programs, including the Lariettes, colorguard and cheer will have a shared dance gymnasium.
“Our band, choir and fine arts programs have outgrown their space and we need to make sure that they have what they need,” Coppell Bond Oversight Committee co-chair David Caviness said.
The cramped conditions not only impede on student creativity, but also raise safety concerns. Dancers currently utilize gymnasiums intended for basketball or volleyball, lacking proper dance floors, bars and mirrors. This issue also extends to band and choir, where students perform in confined spaces.
“We cannot host our concerts in one night,” head band director Kimberly Shuttlesworth said. “We have to, and we try to, but we are breaking fire code when we do that because there’s so many band kids”
The three programs have faced rapid growth throughout the years, bringing urgency for changes, with band currently having 460 students.
“If you’ve got a space that was designed for 180 students and you’ve got 380, you end up having to borrow from other facilities to make everyone fit,” Miller said. “Our aim on this was to design a fine arts facility that mathematically took the numbers of students in band, choir and cheer, and build a space that would accommodate our present needs in 2024 as opposed to the year 2000.”
To sufficiently address these issues, students and staff from these programs have been asked for aspects of the new building they felt were necessary.
“What’s been really fun for us has been working through the process with all of our fine arts teachers, telling us what we need with our storage rooms and practice rooms, then flowing forward to the architect,” Miller said. “The faculty have been in this for a long time and have a good understanding of where they want things to be and how they want things to flow.”
Sketches for the building have been crafted, and the next step involves laying down the foundation. It is projected that the facility will be ready for use by August 2025.
Once the fine arts building is complete, the current area will go into renovation to be converted to a Career and Technical Education space, offering more courses for students.
“It gives both the fine arts and CTE department room for to expand those programs and give them areas to allow our kids to apply what they’re doing as opposed to cramping everybody in, not having enough space for our instruments, not having enough space for our robots and all the different things we’re trying to put into play,” Principal Laura Springer said.
With larger spaces for fine arts programs, students hope to see more functionality and room to enhance the quality of practices, cultivating more talent.
“If the area is bigger, then more people could be in each program and it wouldn’t be cramped,” Ravi said. “More people could join from the student body and also it would just be an easier way to function in that area as well.”
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