HARTFORD — Supporters of the performing arts at Hartford’s secondary schools are pressing school district officials to make long-delayed improvements to the program’s infrastructure.
Hartford High School has strong programs in chorus and band, including an annual musical, a music honor society, and summer music programs, Tracy Dustin-Eichler, president of Friends of Performing Arts at Hartford (FoPAH), told the district’s board and administrators at a meeting on March 31.
“Unfortunately, the condition of the performing arts facilities at Hartford actively undermines this essential program, places a burden on our faculty, and poses safety risks for our students,” Dustin-Eichler said in a written statement drafted by FoPAH that she read and handed out to school officials.
Though the district approved a $21 bond issue for facilities improvements in 2024, work on the performing arts spaces has been held up by the state’s investigation of PCBs in school buildings. If the district invests in those facilities, whatever work the state requires might force the district to undo it, School Board member Jeremy Warren said.
“I’m hopeful that the state will live up to their part and make a decision regarding PCBs that allows us to improve the schools, rather than kicking the can down the road, which isn’t fair to our students or staff that lead our programs,” Warren said.
The amount of work required is considerable. Warren, a 1996 Hartford High graduate, said he acted on the same stage when he was in high school.
Kristen Chapman, a classmate of Warren’s, is the general music and chorus teacher at Hartford Memorial Middle School (and Vermont’s Music Educator of the Year this year), said the theater looks pretty much as it did then.
“It’s in desperate need of some TLC and some bigger space,” she said.
The theater’s stage curtains are past their useful life and there are holes in the stage floor patched with tape and paint, FoPAH members wrote in their letter to the district. There’s a bucket perched above the stage to catch rainwater that leaks in from the roof and the theater’s aging rigging and lightboard “compromise both safety and educational quality.” The middle school also uses the high school stage for productions.
There are also fire code issues that require the school to block off 93 of the theater’s 336 seats, which cuts into the theater program’s revenue and limits seating for both theater productions and school concerts. The continued use of the theater is a looming question, and directors have had to make back up plans to use other venues, such as Briggs Opera House, for school productions.
Problems extend beyond the theater.
The school’s band room is prone to flooding, which endangers the band’s equipment and limits storage space. The theater’s storage space, in a basement known at the school as “the catacombs,” has become unusable, which means sets can be taken out to be used, but can’t be put back in, Lanni Luce West, who has been directing theater at the high school since 2019, said in an interview.
A middle school production opening on May 7 will need to load its set onto the stage, but the set from the most recent high school production is still in place because there’s nowhere else to put it, West said.
“It’s really sad, because we have such a strong performing arts department,” she said.
Chorus teacher and musical theater director Andrea Nardone got quotes for new curtains ($28,000) and to replace the stage floor ($35,000) a few years ago, but “nothing came of it,” she said.
The bond issue includes funding for theater upgrades, “to basically get the place up to snuff,” Nardone said. She understands that the PCB issue has put the work on hold, but “at some point we can’t just keep waiting,” she said.
It’s not uncommon for Upper Valley schools to do without facilities. Two schools that regularly win state track and field championships, White River Valley High School and Thetford Academy, don’t have tracks, for example. Lebanon High School stages plays at Lebanon Opera House.
But Hartford has long had a theater and bustling music and theater programs. West directed in November a North Country Community Theatre production of “Nice Work if You Can Get It” that featured 20 Hartford High students. And the school has sent performers on to careers in the arts, most recently musical theater wunderkinds Macy Bettwieser and Monet Nowlan.
“We have a lot of kids who, this is what they pursue,” Chapman said in an interview.
“The reduced seating, lack of upkeep, and just the age of materials and equipment is not fair to our students or the programs themselves,” Warren said. The older of his two children is involved in performing arts at the high school, he said.
Hartford High senior Molly Fournier-Stephens, performs in pretty much every ensemble the music department offers (jazz, concert and pep bands and the concert choir) and has been a stage manager all four years of high school. She spoke to the School Board about the performing arts facilities when she was in 9th grade. Now 18, she’s working part-time in professional theater.
“As a senior, a saying that I keep coming back to is to leave a place better than you found it,” she told the board. “From talking to you four years ago to now, I stand here questioning if I was able to do that. This community deserves to practice, perform and live in spaces that are safe and up to code.”
