Another tragic accident at a high school involving a poorly constructed stage extension and a jukebox musical at Westfield High School in Westfield, Indiana.
Multiple news outlets have some raw phone footage of the accident at Westfield High School in . The local CBS affiliate
WISH has a good collection of footage. It's a replay of the
Servite High School accident a little more that one year ago. Live loads can have a very unpredictable reaction on structures.
Phish anyone?
Orchestra pit extensions in high schools are a bad idea. Why? Because I have only been in a handful of high schools where the arts education funding is sufficient to ensure that a qualified technical director is on staff and can adequately design the back side of the scenery.
WISHTV.com reported that the Indiana State Fire Marshal was on the scene. Jim Greeson is not the man to lead the investigation. His office is one of many in the state that has yet to answer my FOIA requests about the emergency planning exercise prior to the state fair tragedy.
On a larger scale, let's start the discussion on how we make this better.
1. Adequately fund arts education. If you don't have the right staff in place you can't expect that accidents like this won't continue to happen. Schools and districts pay for athletic trainers so their athletes don't get injured. Properly trained technical directors can help reduce these risks.
2. Start an honest discussion about where safety regulations come from and how they are applied in educational settings. OSHA does not cover students. This is true for high schools and colleges, even though students do the same things that their professional counterparts do on a daily basis. Applying OSHA's general duty clause in education makes sense, but in the fiscally constrained educational landscape, hopes and prayers are less expensive than active risk assessment and appropriate staffing.
3. Dispense with the argument that theatre doesn't help with standardized tests. For anyone who is interested, I will bring you a lesson in Newtonian physics and math where high school students apply math and science with practical theatre application. Yes, we make art with science.
