Stories matter, and Sorensen Magnet School of the Arts and Humanities has a beautiful story about creativity, perseverance, hard work and collaboration. 

In 2007, Sorensen had poor enrollment and the cost was too high to keep Sorensen open. The school district called a staff meeting the week before Thanksgiving and announced that they would be closing our school, effective at the end of the school year.

As you can imagine, this news devastated our staff, students and hard-working families. The Sorensen staff collaborated with our amazing families and local businesses to see what we could accomplish together.  The path forward was clear, we must fight to “Save Sorensen!”

With countless hours, before and after school meetings, planning sessions and campaigns, we organized a proposal for the school board. The proposal included changing our name and structure, expanding our existing arts programs and creating new arts programming that was unique to our region.   After a long and hard battle, the school board approved our plans and gave us two years to meet certain conditions. These conditions included raising funds to support our programs, increasing enrollment and increasing student achievement.

 Sorensen met those goals and has continued to meet and exceed them year after year since 2008.  Sorensen is one of the best performing schools in the state. We are currently ranked number 4 in the state according to Idaho Ed News. We have a beautiful collaboration between our staff, families, students, downtown businesses and our local art community.

Each day at Sorensen, kids benefit from the integration of visual and performing arts into the curriculum because of a variety of opportunities including:

A& H BLOCK
Sorensen’s school day allows for a 40 minute “Arts and Humanities” block rotation three days per week. All classrooms rotate through eleven different “electives” each year including:  Geometry Art, Lego Club, Theater, World Culture, Fiber Art, Dance, Choral Music, Mosaic Art, Drumming, Juggling, Spanish, Yoga, Photography and Pottery.

BEFORE/AFTER SCHOOL PERFORMANCE TEAMS
Sorensen students have the opportunity to participate in the following Performance Teams: Theater, Dance, Canto de Sorensen (choir), Marimbas, Chess, Juggling, Fine Arts, Stage Tech, Lego Club, Glass Art and Spanish.

FRIDAY GATHERING
Sorensen students participate in weekly gatherings where all students have opportunities to perform on stage to showcase their talents.

ARTIST IN RESIDENCY
Throughout the year, large integrated art units that immerse the students in a particular genre of visual or performing arts are taught by professional artists.

CURRICULUM ENHANCEMENT
The Sorensen staff works daily to weave the arts into our district mandated curriculum and standards.

The annual Sorensen Auction & Soirée was created by dedicated parents and local businesses out of our need to financially support the efforts to save the school, and amazingly, each year the auction continues to raise all of the funds to support Sorensen’s arts and humanities programming.

Sorensen receives NO additional funding from the district or the state to provide the programming described above.  Our Sorensen community is strong and vibrant and our parents are a huge reason our school has been able to foster our children’s individuality, creativity and excitement for learning. 

Our auction committee will begin reaching out very soon to seek volunteers, donations and participation in this year’s Auction & Soirée. We hope that you will be part of our community and will participate and aid in Sorensen’s continued success. We are looking forward to a fun evening together where we can eat, dance and support our school and students.

 Please email us with any questions or ideas at auction@smpto.org.