THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 17, 1995 TAG: 9511170619
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Ida Kay's Portsmouth
SOURCE: Ida Kay Jordan
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Young Audiences, the organization that specializes in live performances for school students, is raffling scholarships again.
It works this way:
You pay $5 for a chance on a scholarship.
From that $5, the scholarships will get $2 and the school in whose name the chance was sold will get $2. Young Audiences will keep $1.
Young Audiences hopes to sell 5,000 raffle tickets. Three scholarships of $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000 will be awarded March 23 at the Waterside stage.
The schools that sell the tickets can use their money to buy anything they need. Young Audiences, of course, would like to see them book YA concerts, but that is not a requirement.
The organization's $5,000 will be used to continue their work - that is, to provide concerts for school students.
Anyway you look at it, the students win.
But guess what! Only two Portsmouth public schools and the Portsmouth campus of Tidewater Community College have signed up to participate, according to Gladys Maxwell, a Portsmouth woman who serves on the YA board.
Portsmouth always has provided leadership for Young Audiences. Several of its strongest presidents have been Portsmouth women. But Portsmouth schools have taken little advantage of the programs.
And now they are passing up the opportunity to pick up some money they could use to bring live performances to Portsmouth students - or to buy computers if they think that is more important.
There's nothing that says they have to spend the money on Young Audiences programs, Maxwell said.
I believe quite a few tickets could be sold here because everybody wins even if they don't get one of the scholarships.
A person who buys a ticket puts the name of someone of any age - from kindergarten to senior citizens - on a ticket. Winners may take the money for immediate use to pay tuition or, in the case of young children, invest it to earn even more money.
Suppose you bought a winning ticket in the name of your 5-year-old grandchild. That child could wind up with a good beginning toward a college education with the invested scholarship.
Meanwhile, the child's school could have some extra money for performances or for books, if need be.
I wonder why some of the businesses and organizations who have adopted Portsmouth schools don't take the sale of the tickets as a project.
Even those of us without young children or grandchildren have young friends or neighbors who could benefit. Many of us would invest $5 in the project just to support the schools.
Any person who has been turned on by music or dance, by theater or visual art is likely to support this project. They know personally the importance and the fun of experiencing live performance at a young age.
One of the real blessings of my life was growing up in a town attuned to music. In addition, the lady who ran the elementary schools for three or four generations was, by her own admission, a frustrated performer - a musician whose family thought no lady should appear on the stage.
As a result, she planned elaborate - and socially acceptable - May Day programs and also staged a song-and-dance show every year in which all of her young charges made mandatory appearances. In addition, she saw to it that the grammar school students periodically heard programs by touring performers. I have no idea where she got the money to pay them.
By the time we got to high school, most of us were anxious to sign up to sing in a glee club or play in a band. Whether we knew it or not, we had been tuned in to the performing arts.
That's as it should be. Students must be given the exposure during their most formative years if they are going to grow up enjoying the arts. Aside from the pure pleasure, the arts offer new ways to experience and understand life.
It's disturbing to think that the kids in Portsmouth public schools may be missing the opportunity of a lifetime.
Perhaps the schools would think more about adding the Young Audiences programs to their benefits if the public showed real support for the scholarship raffle.
If we all buy one ticket, the schools that participate will come out much the better. And if we buy in, we also can push the schools to bring more programs to town. by CNB