Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (Kinder HSPVA, HSPVA or PVA) is a secondary school located at 790 Austin Street in the downtown district of Houston, Texas. The school is a part of the Houston Independent School District.
The school provides education for grades nine through twelve. The school is divided into six departments: instrumental music, vocal music, dance, theater (including technical theater), visual arts, and creative writing.
HSPVA was placed as the top school in the Greater Houston Area by Children at Risk's 2009 annual ranking of high schools, and it has continued to be ranked as an "A" grade or higher by Children at Risk. Since 2003, HSPVA has had eight students named US Presidential Scholars in the Arts (Presidential Scholars Program) by the US Department of Education as selected by the National YoungArts Foundation (YoungArts).
As a Magnet school, HSPVA does not automatically enroll students from the surrounding neighborhood; the surrounding neighborhood is zoned to Northside High School.
Art areas
There are six art areas: vocal music, instrumental music, dance, theatre, visual art, and creative writing. There are subdivisions within some of these art areas. Instrumental Music breaks down into band, orchestra, jazz, mariachi, and piano. Theatre breaks down into musical theatre, acting, and technical theatre.
History
HSPVA was established in 1971.
HISD chose Ruth Denney as the school's founding director. The district asked Denney to choose between three potential sites: W. D. Cleveland Elementary School, Montrose Elementary School, and the former Temple Beth Israel building. After touring them, Denney selected the temple building and in May 1971 the final plans for HSPVA were presented to the school board.
Parents rallied against a planned move to Timbergrove Manor due to its lack of proximity to Downtown Houston, artist landmarks, and the Houston Museum District, even though the district had already paid $500,000 for planning as of 1979. The school moved to 4001 Stanford Street, the site of the former Montrose Elementary School, in 1982. The cost was $1.3 million, and the HISD board had given the green light to the move the previous year. Keith Plocek of the Houston Press wrote that partly due to the 9th grade being reassigned to the high school level in 1981, "The building on Stanford Street was overcrowded from the get-go" as the facility was only intended for grades 10-12. The HSPVA Friends booster club stated an intention to raise funds to recoup the money used for the Timbergrove site planning; according to the group, the district and HSPVA Friends had conflicting interpretations of their accord in the said recouping, and Plocek stated "The Friends never really paid much of the bill".
By the late 1990s parents advocated for another move due to overpopulation, but again rejected the idea of the Timbergrove site due to the lack of proximity. In the 1990s, there was a proposal to move HSPVA to the Bob R. Casey Federal Building in Downtown Houston. HISD later proposed moving the school near the Gregory-Lincoln Education Center in Houston's Freedmen's Town Historical District in the Fourth Ward. HISD officials agreed to pursue a relocation at that time as Friends of HSPVA agreed to raise about 50% of a projected $30 million cost to develop a new site; otherwise HISD officials were reluctant to promote building a new HSPVA when there were schools with campuses in much worse repair.
The Fourth Ward building would have included a 2000+ seat state-of-the-art theater, updated facilities and possibly a recording studio. Construction was temporarily delayed due to the discovery of a possible American Civil War-era cemetery. In June 2007, the project page for the building displayed "CANCELLED." The site that was to have the new HSPVA instead has the new Carnegie Vanguard High School.
Naming discussion
On October 13, 2016, the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees voted 7 to 2 to accept a naming rights contract from the Kinder Foundation for a $7.5 million for capital improvements to the new facility. The school's name was to become Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts when the school moved to the new downtown location. The Kinder funds provide primarily upgrades to theater equipment and some performance spaces, such as outfitting the mini-theater.
The contract was approved by the school board after the Kinder Foundation said it would withdraw the funds if the board did not vote, six days after the public announcement of the deal.