$8.8M Oakwood Schools Foundation effort aims to expand arts education

About $5 million of total cost already committed from about 30 donors.

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

Credit: CONTRIBUTED

An $8.8 million privately funded campaign for new and upgraded arts facilities at Oakwood Junior High and High School is in the works.

The plan for “state-of-the-art facilities” at the 113-year-old building on Far Hills Avenue is designed to “elevate and celebrate the arts in Oakwood,” the Oakwood Schools Foundation announced Friday night.

The foundation has $5 million committed already from about 30 donors, its development director told the Dayton Daily News.

“The campaign is going to enhance and celebrate the arts in Oakwood schools,” Brandy McFall said. “Really, this is a campaign for our students. We’ve developed this project as a need for our students to be able to fully develop and pursue their artistic passions and disciplines.”

The campaign aims to create a performing arts wing to include “dedicated and acoustically tuned band, choir and orchestra practice and performance spaces,” according to OSF documents.

The project would renovate the building’s art area for “a new Visual Arts Center that includes new classrooms, and an open art gallery to showcase and celebrate student, alumni and community art,” foundation records state.

The plan also calls for updating the auditorium with acoustical and video enhancements, theatrical lighting and equipment upgrades.

The goal for the campaign is to begin the project next summer and complete it in 2023, according to the foundation.

The campaign’s timing complements the school district’s master facilities plan, officials said.

The foundation called it “a significant educational enhancement” that was “identified by the community as paramount and one that could attract significant private support from current friends and residents of the Oakwood community, and Oakwood parents and alumni both local and across the country.”

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