Tacoma School of the Arts (SOTA) is a downtown-Tacoma magnet high school within Tacoma Public Schools, established in fall 2001 with start-up funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. SOTA is the only dedicated arts high school in the greater Tacoma area and enrolls roughly 660 students drawn from across the district.
Classes are spread across more than ten downtown buildings that have served as a department store, music store, and dance studio - a deliberate civic-fabric approach to schooling. Departments include visual arts (photography, graphic design, film, drawing, painting), performing arts (instrumental and vocal music, songwriting, dance, technical theater), and the SOTABots robotics team. The school originally enrolled grades 10-12; it began admitting ninth graders in 2012.
SOTA is part of a small constellation of Tacoma Public Schools choice campuses that also includes the Science and Math Institute (SAMI), opened in 2009, and the Industrial Design, Engineering, and Arts school (IDEA), opened in 2016. SOTA has received state Schools of Excellence in Arts Education recognition, and notable alumni include actress Madelaine Petsch, who graduated in 2012.
Source: WA ERDC Graduate Outcomes.
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