Last year, I volunteered to help with judging some of the entries from Nelsen Middle School’s Reflections Program. It’s a national cultural arts competition in which students compete in literature, music, photography, visual arts, film and dance.

Winners advance from the local, to state and finally the national level. To win an award at the state level is very prestigious.

I judged the visual arts and some poetry for the literature category. It was a great experience for me, and I later discovered that one of the photographs received an Award of Excellence at the state level. This year’s Reflections theme is: “The world would be a better place if…”

I was at Nelsen Middle School to meet Terri Zura and Megan Jacob who have been involved in the PTA Reflections program in Renton Schools. Terri heads up the computer lab at Nelsen, is a board member of Allied Arts of Renton, and last year was chairman of the Renton School District’s Reflections Program.

Megan is the Renton Council co-president. I learned a lot about the potential of this program as well as the tough challenges that it faces today.

Designed in part to fill the gap caused by budget cuts for public educational art opportunities, the program works through donations, volunteers and the efforts of teachers and parents.

Megan told me, “It’s so nice to see kids adapt and change through the years from elementary through high school. The categories have expanded over the years, and the students are incorporating new avenues for their creative expressions.”

Reflections also has a category for special needs students to allow for fair competitive creativity. Megan also said, “It’s wonderful to see their pride of accomplishment. And art is really such a matter of perspective.”

There are guidelines for the student entries which can cause some concern at times. When one young man turned in a song he had written, it had about seven uses of an unprintable word. Rather than eliminating him completely from the competition, the judges gave him a choice to rewrite and submit another version, which he did.

Renton has had a few entries over the years that have placed at the state level. One of the entries that won first place at state and then continued onto the national level was in 1994. It was a visual arts entry by Terri Zura’s daughter, Stephanie. She was a Highlands fourth-grader at the time, and went on to achieve a college degree in fine arts. Terri partly attributes her success to participation in the Reflections Program.

Sarah Cabarteja won a first place in photography, went on to win first place at the Renton PTSA Council level, then received an “Award of Excellence” at the State PTSA level.

Unfortunately, the program has suffered in recent years especially in some school districts.

Megan said, “When he was in elementary school, my son Wilson’s entry in the photography category made it to the council level. He also likes to write, and this year wanted to compete in literature. However he and many other students can’t participate because their schools either choose not to support the program or can’t find volunteers to run it.”

Both Megan and Terri explained that due to increased rigid national scholastic standards, school teachers have limited time and no incentive to support the program. And parental involvement seems in part to depend on the local economy of the school district.

I believe that the arts do not have the perceived value they deserve in our educational structure. If you would like to get involved in this worthy effort, you can email the Reflections Chair at Catherine_ps@hotmail.com.