Let's agree that most YouTube videos of cover songs by high school students are meant to entertain a small circle of friends and earn derisive snorts much beyond the school grounds. Few are so pure in intention and strikingly beautiful in execution that they break the heart of the original artist.
Canadian students Kate Macdonald and Janelle Blanchard recorded a version of Neko Case's brooding "Star Witness" on a school staircase. The result moved Case to tears. "Wow. That just made me bawl my eyes out," she tweeted. "What beautiful singers. I'm not worthy... Holy god. They broke the shit out of my heart!!" Mine, too. They accomplish this with a ukelele, angelic voices, a talent for harmony -- and a mission to save their school.
The Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School houses an arts-intensive program that draws creative students from the Toronto area. But, in September, the local school board voted to close the school. It is the only school in downtown Peterborough and is described by locals as vital to the life of the community. Kate and Janelle took to the stairwell to record Case's song to draw attention to the impending closure. That tweet from Case has the video (by Jared Raab) flying around the Internet. You don't want to miss it. This is a tough time for school arts programs and these enormously talented students give the need to support arts in schools fresh faces and achingly clear voices.
Learn more here.
Performed by Kate Macdonald & Janelle Blanchard
Recorded in the stairwell at P.C.V.S. by Alex Unger with assistance from Emmott Clancy
Video by Jared Raab
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TAS needs new elevators too... not to mention that little $1.2million asbestos removal project.
TAS supporters make it seem like moving to their school is the obvious choice, but there is so much going on behind the scenes. Like the school board trustee who is a former principal, and the many supporters who'd lose bucket loads of money if their TAS-area real estate lost value...
The whole process seems a little fishy. The fact that the board has voted to plough ahead with the closure even in the face of incredible opposition from the community furthers suspicions that they have something to hide.
No matter what happens, a lot of lives are going to be changed. As a PCVS supporter, I have seen firsthand what makes PCVS irreplaceable in this community. I just wish those on the other side would take a minute to see the facts against them and change their minds like so many others have.
This website just put up a new page with more of the story for outsiders who don't have the facts:
http://peterboroughneedspcvs.com/?page_id=202
The school has a great relationship with the downtown. Imagine how empty the streets will look during the day when 800 students aren't buying their snacks and getting rid of their disposable income in the many small independently owned shops? In a time when most city planners are looking for ways to inject life into dying downtown cores, this school board wants to take a relatively large student/teacher population in the heart of a thriving downtown and bus it to the suburbs, This is insanity!
These reasons, among thousands of others, should be enough to realize that if the school closes, Peterborough the city, Peterborough the city known as a place with mostly old folks homes and generic suburbs to those who never experienced the downtown core, is compromising itself, its reputation among people who come from Peterborough, and also the opportunities for and inclusion of its youth, which comes across like a lack of respect.
As for Kate and Janelle, jesus, you girls can sing. And thank you, and congratulations for bringing so much attention to the issue. Holy moly.
This kind of environment and attitude is not only a rare way for a high school social dynamic to function, but it also doesn't come to be over night, and is a standard learnt by new students by the collective behaviour of the previous and elder students: it is an inherited attitude, uprooting, and attempting to replant it is a not only a dangerous stroke to tamper with, but also seems like a misguided and unnecessary adaptation. It is dangerous because the environment it will be replanted into is one that is already established, and however similar or dissimilar, is different. Why change something that works well as it stands?
It would be wonderful to suggest that this attitude would be transplanted easily, or that students can always experience the fruits of the downtown core if they would only make the effort, but the reality is that these things haven't been as accessible to other teenagers who have gone to other high schools as they have been to those who did go to PCVS, those who were raised downtown.
High school is just as much, if not most, about raising teenagers in a community as it is about the studies undertaken in the buildings.
PCVS raises Peterborough's young adults as active members of their community in the centre of their community: the richest and most notable part of Peterborough. This platform of inclusion to be part of the identity of the city one lives in, is offered by the location of PCVS, and is a platform many teenagers would otherwise not have been as (and are otherwise not as) exposed to.
In addition to the importance of the location, a social dynamic of the school has been thoroughly established and introduces itself year after year after year as all-inclusive and relentlessly accepting. It is an environment that allows and encourages every individual to rebuild and re-invent themselves over and over again as he or she pleases, as he or she defines how they feel they should be as a person for the rest of their lives, on their own terms. [...]