District leaders and community members got a behind the scenes look at the campus on Friday as the FISD Insight group spent the morning touring’s school’s athletic and fine arts facilities.

“I just want to learn more about the school district,” Frisco resident Earleen Caldwell said. “I have two grandchildren at Vaughan Elementary, and this is our family’s first year in public education. We have been really impressed so far and I just want to learn more about the district so that I can help support them.”

Frisco ISD Fine Arts Coordinator Chris Cansler, guided a portion of the tour through the art and music halls of the school, providing descriptions of different courses and programs from a district wide perspective.

“The Insight visit for the community gives some of these people an opportunity to kind of come in and really see what Frisco ISD is all about, because students are doing such great things in fine arts, and today is about Fine Arts and athletics,” Cansler said. “It really gives them literally insight into what what happens on a day to day basis, instead of just, a lot of times from outside looking in, it’s about the product. You’ll see art on the walls, or will go to a concert or you’ll go to a game and they only observe the impact.”

Cansler believes the program offers members of the Insight group an opportunity to understand what these courses build within fine arts and athletic students.

“Community members can come in and see all of the process, like how do we get to that through the art, through the music or through athletic practice,” Cansler said. “Fine Arts and athletics teaches the students, not just about what they get in a regular classroom, but time management and the empathy skills. The other skills, the soft skills that fine art focuses on, a whole lot.”

Insight member JoNelle Short was nothing short of impressed with the district’s efforts in it’s extracurricular activities.

“Wow, it provides so many opportunities because they’re not in just one classroom,” Short said. “They have the ability to do fine arts, football, whatever and still pursue other interests. They’re not just one. It’s far greater than where I was as a student, just a phenomenal opportunity.”

Short recognized that Frisco ISD’s programs, in many ways, are above and beyond some other school programs.

“It’s opened my eyes from when I was in school myself,” Short said. “I love the fact that they teach life experience, not always about winning, because we’re not going to win if life. Sometimes life knocks us down, but we have to be able to be strong enough to get back up.”

Pete Hazzard, Frisco ISD Director of Fine Arts, is proud of the districts infrastructure supporting fine arts and athletics.

“Our schools continue to grow and what that means is more opportunities for students,” he said. “Our district is so focused on making sure that we know every child by name and need, it’s our student opportunity model to make sure students always have access equitably excellent programs. Regardless of where they go to school or what program they are involved in, they’re going to grow as people, they are going to grow as artists, athletes, all of those different things. The outlook for our schools in the future continues to get better because of our community’s commitment to making sure those opportunities still exist.”

As a result of Friday’s tour, Hazzard believes the fine art and athletic programs will continue to develop.

“They continue to grow, participation rates continue to be through the roof because there are more opportunities for students to participate because of our student opportunity model,” he said. “There is a huge growth in the number of participants, but there is also continued growth in the success rate of the end product both athletically and fine arts. That’s really due to  great teaching and great learning that’s going on as we continue to hire the best teachers in the country, students are receiving a better education and because of the opportunities they have, we continue to be recognized athletically, and from a fine arts standpoint, throughout the state at the very highest level and even nationally. That’s just going to continue as more students get involved and those competitive results continue to be successful as they are.”

Leading much of the athletics portion of the tour, campus athletic director and head football coach Chris Burtch believes that athletics isn’t just about the sport, but about building hardworking, and well rounded individuals.

“On a soccer team or on a football team or basketball team or whatever, it’s not just the dribbling the ball and shooting. It’s working with others,” he said. “It’s seeing the bigger picture, it’s sacrificing some of the things that I want some for what we need.”