COVA: Conservatory of Vocal and Instrumental Arts

COVA is a great school… academic-​wise. The teachers there are very supportive of the students and want only the best for them and their education. They treat everyone equally whether they’re struggling or not. The scores they average every year for State Standard Testing is exceptional! You’ll never see that in other schools. But there is a difference between the teacher staff and administrative staff.
Teacher staff is great! I have no complaints against them. Despite all of this, there is a biased environment there when it comes to administrative staff. I feel as if favoristism plays a huge factor in who gets what. Level of the harshness of punishments are very different towards certain students. To exaggerate my point (this did not actually happen), say a student who has never had an infraction before spray paints inappropriate drawings on the wall, but gets left off with a warning and a two paragraph essay. Then say a student who has been in trouble multiple times in the past does nothing but litter, they get suspended. Of course, this is an overexaggerated example of the kind of punishment bias you’ll see, but you get my point. Apart from punishment bias, the way they treat different students in general is different. If you end up becoming the favorite, get ready to receive special treatment.
The environment, I feel, is very negative. Some staff members don’t know how to approach children in a proper way. There is a lack of positivity and the lack of knowing how to handle a child. There have also been reports of students feeling harassed by another adult. But no names shall be named.
I would recommend COVA for the education and the music. I forgot to mention that the music program is amazing. It’s filled with opportunities that you’ll never see anywhere else. This school revolves around music, so I wouldn’t suggest putting your child into this school if he/​she isn’t interested in the arts. I don’t know what kind of changes will happen in the future. So if you want to give it a shot, you can go ahead, but from my experience, we got caught in a bad year and unveiled the deep dark secrets of COVA. Also, if you do end up taking your child to COVA, encourage them to talk about anything that happens there because once something goes wrong and everything starts to fall apart, that’s when COVA goes downhill. If you start to notice that, I would say that you should just leave because knowing what it’s like to be in the middle of a downhill year has messed everyone up, not just the students.