Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts


The Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts is a public alternative high school in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1982 and is part of the San Francisco Unified School District.

History

For many years, Ruth Asawa, sculptor and passionate advocate for arts in education, as well as others had campaigned to start a public high school in San Francisco devoted to the arts, with the ultimate goal of such a school to be located in the arts corridor in the heart of San Francisco's Civic Center.
At its inception in 1982, SOTA was created as a part of J. Eugene McAteer High School, on its present site on Portola Drive. Ten years later, in 1992, the school - now a full-fledged public school separate from McAteer - was relocated to the former SFUSD Frederick Burke Elementary School at 700 Font Boulevard on the campus of San Francisco State University. Due to the dissolution of McAteer High School in 2002, SOTA was offered to return to the more appropriate, fully equipped high school site. The school community elected to make this move, with the understanding that the school would eventually be situated in the Civic Center.
In 2005 a new public high school, the Academy of Arts and Sciences, was started and given space on the McAteer campus. Although it shares the campus with the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, it is a completely separate school. Now called The Academy - San Francisco @ McAteer, it admits students through the normal high school admissions process.
In 2010, SOTA was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in honor of Ruth Asawa. In 2011, the school was recognized as a "California Distinguished School" by the California Department of Education as one of the state's most "exemplary and inspiring" public schools, demonstrating significant gains in narrowing the achievement gap among its students.

Notable alumni