By Dana M. Nichols

Record Staff Writer

August 07, 2013

SAN ANDREAS – Calaveras Unified School District trustees gave the go-ahead Tuesday night to draft plans for a 300-seat performing arts center to be built at Calaveras High School.

If all goes well, the district could break ground on the center by next summer, and young actors, musicians and dancers could perform there sometime in the 2015-16 school year, Calaveras Unified Superintendent Mark Campbell said.

The vote was 4-1, with Trustee Gregory Gustafson opposed. Gustafson has consistently voiced concerns about the cost of building an arts center at a time when money is tight for other needs. During the meeting, he showed a patched textbook with a broken binding that he said his daughter, a student in the district, was issued.

In January, a majority of the board expressed similar concerns. Then, Trustees Evan Garamendi and Karan Bowsher joined Gustafson to kill plans for a 500-seat performing arts center that would have cost an estimated $5.4 million to build.

In the months since, however, district officials came back with a less expensive plan that they say can be built with money the district has on hand, thus avoiding the need to borrow any money.

In June, Bowsher voted to support development of a more modest plan. And Tuesday, Garamendi joined the majority.

“I will do everything I can to make sure this works smoothly,” Garamendi said.

Music teachers and longtime boosters of the arts center proposal were thrilled.

“We are really enthusiastic about this plan,” said Robert Wise, a music teacher for the district.

“We are 100 percent behind this design.”

The design concept calls for a thrust stage – which extends into the audience and usually has seating on three sides – with amphitheater-style seating. Wise said that at the request of music instructors, the stage was made a little wider to make it possible to get everyone in a large band on stage.

A performing arts center has been proposed at least since 2006, when it was one of the selling points for a $13.5 million school bond approved by Calaveras Unified voters.

Whether that center finally gets built in 2016 – a decade after the bond vote – depends in part on how quickly the California Division of the State Architect is able to review and approve the plans, Campbell said.

Only if the state review is relatively prompt will it be possible to go to bid next spring and start construction next summer, he said.

Dave Tanner, who then had children attending Calaveras Unified schools, campaigned for that 2006 bond measure in hopes his children, both musicians, would perform in the proposed center.

Seven years later, however, his son David Tanner has graduated college and is now a music instructor at St. Mary’s High School in Stockton. His daughter Katie is in college.

Still, Tanner said he’s thrilled that a center will finally be built. “We made promises,” he said of the 2006 bond measure campaign. “We might as well get what we were promised.”

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 607-1361 or dnichols@recordnet.com. Visit his blog at www.recordnet.com/calaverasblog.