Cicely Tyson School of Performing and Fine Arts is a specialty magnetpublic middle school / high school that serves students in sixth through twelfth grades in the city ofEast Orange in Essex County, New Jersey, United States, as part of the East Orange School District, offering separate middle school and high school curricula. The school is named for actress Cicely Tyson. Students are accepted based on all their talents. The school teaches core disciplines while focusing on the creative potential of the students. As of the 2018–19 school year, the school had an enrollment of 740 students and 69.0 classroom teachers, for a student–teacher ratio of 10.7:1. There were 369 students eligible for free lunch and 29 eligible for reduced-cost lunch. In September 2009, Tyson's historic Elmwood Avenue building closed, and a new $180 million, facility on Walnut Street took its place. The new facility is among the largest and most technologically advanced schools ever built in the state of New Jersey, with extensive performing arts facilities which meet or exceed the highest professional standards. The school consists of an elementary school and middle/high school. The high school's 800-seat theater has been built to Broadway standards in terms of sound, lighting and acoustics. In addition to the school's theaters, students have access to a TV studio, art studios, music rooms, individual performance practice rooms, drafting rooms and shops to build and design stage sets. The classrooms all feature smartboards, advanced integrated audio-visual systems, and multiple computer workstations.
Awards, recognition and rankings
The school was the 247th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 233rd in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 221st in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 208 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 255th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state. 2009 reports published in The Star-Ledger showed Tyson to be the most improved school in an Abbott District, and among the most improved schools in the state of New Jersey, that year.
