Every Kid Gets a Stage in Lake Elsinore

In Lake Elsinore there is a public school where every child dances, sings, acts and paints, and nobody pays tuition. It is called Julia Lee Performing Arts Academy, or JLPAA. It serves about 410 kids from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade. Its founder, Tanya Lee-Taylor, named it for her great-aunt, a blues star who once sang with a president in the room. If your child is always putting on a show in the living room, this one is for you.

Julia Lee was born in Missouri in 1902 and grew up in Kansas City. Her father led a string band. Her brother George led an orchestra, and Julia sang and played piano in it as a teenager.

She got good. Very good. For sixteen years she held down the piano at Milton's Tap Room in Kansas City. In the 1940s she signed with Capitol Records and took records to number one on the national R&B chart. In March 1949 she performed at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner, with President Harry Truman in the audience. Kansas City called her its First Lady of the Blues.

Tanya Lee-Taylor grew up hearing about her great-aunt. She also watched schools cut music, theatre and dance to save money. So she set out to build the opposite: a school where arts training is part of the day, not something a family has to go find and pay for on its own.

The Riverside County Board of Education approved her charter on April 11, 2018. A charter school is a public school that runs on its own plan with its own focus. It is free, like any other public school. JLPAA's focus is right there in the name.

Today Tanya is the school's Founder and Superintendent. She is a Black woman leading a public school in the Inland Empire, and the kids see that every day. They see a leader who knows where she comes from and brings it to work with her.

At a lot of schools, the arts are a club for the few kids who try out. At JLPAA the arts are part of the regular week, from TK on up, and each one has its own teacher.

Then it all goes on a real stage. Holiday shows come with full sets and costumes. There are ribbon dances, ballet solos, piano recitals and big numbers where a whole grade performs together.

The school puts one line in front of every student.

“You don't have to be the best dancer to lead.”

That line is the whole idea. JLPAA is not only for the kid who already sings in every room. It is also for the shy kid who has not found out yet what they can do.

JLPAA kids meet working artists. Cast members from the Netflix musical Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey have come to the school for screenings with students. Former students have gone on to dance with Debbie Allen's program, work on film productions and keep training in the arts.

That matters for more than talent. Arts are one of the strongest reasons a kid keeps showing up to school, which we covered in Juilliard Came to Compton.

The doors open outside the arts too. Through Math Hoops, a basketball math game in the after school program, JLPAA students earned an invitation to the official NBA Draft in New York City.

Principal Rachel A. Thomas runs the school day with the children at the center of it. Every teacher is state certified, and they teach a college prep curriculum next to the arts. The school's mission says what it wants to send into high school: young people who are independent, cooperative, responsible and creative.

Character is taught on purpose. Students learn five values: mutual respect, responsibility, courage, thoughtfulness and integrity. A schoolwide program called PBIS, short for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, rewards kids for living them. In June the school sent off its Class of 2026 eighth graders.

Picking a school comes down to trust. Here is what JLPAA has in place.

Tanya is not done. She is opening a second school, The Legacy of Julia Lee Performing Arts Academy, a free public PreK through 8th grade charter in Kansas City, Missouri. It brings Julia Lee back to the city that made her, with dance, theatre, band, choir and STEAM, and it calls the Lake Elsinore campus its founding school.

She has also written a children's book about her family and Julia Lee, so kids can grow up knowing the story. And as all of it grows, Tanya plans to take her Lake Elsinore students along for the ride.

The best way to know if a school fits your child is to walk in the door. JLPAA is at 19740 Grand Ave. in Lake Elsinore, a short drive from Wildomar, Canyon Lake, Menifee and Murrieta. Call (951) 595-4500, email contactus@jlpaaschool.org, or schedule a visit. When you are ready, start enrollment or join the interest list.

How to enroll, step by step: