Oklahoma City – Harding Fine Arts Academy, an award-winning public charter high school in Oklahoma City, and Harding Fine Arts Academy Foundation, a nonprofit support foundation, have elected new officers and directors.
Jean Hendrickson, M.Ed., was elected president of the school’s board, replacing Susan Gabbard, who was elected to a new three-year term as a director. Hendrickson is a speaker, writer, and advocate for creative, innovative teaching and learning, and director emeritus of Oklahoma A+ Schools at the University of Central Oklahoma.
Other school board officers include: Dr. Sherry Rowan, vice president; John Yoeckel, secretary; and Deanna Brandt, treasurer. Sunshine Dukes was also elected as a director, and former school board treasurer Cheryl Borelli was re-elected to a three-year term of service. Dr. Rowan is a former principal of Harding Fine Arts Academy.
School co-founder Joy Reed Belt is serving an additional term as president of the foundation’s board.
Other foundation officers include Sally Bentley, vice president; Carol McPheeters, secretary; and V. Randall Compton, treasurer. Both McPheeters and Compton were reelected for three-year director terms. Newly-elected foundation board members include: Megan Hornbeek Allen and Doug Eason. Bentley, McPheeters and Eason are Harding High School alumni.
Harding Fine Arts Academy (HFAA) is a public charter high school founded in 2005 by John L. Belt and the HFAA board of directors with the vision that education was not just preparation for life; education is life itself. The school’s arts-infused “STEAM” curriculum employs science, technology, English, and mathematics, in addition to a variety of courses in the performing and visual arts. HFAA opened with 65 students in 9th grade and has grown to an enrollment of almost 400 students in grades 9 through 12. In just 15 years, Harding Fine Arts Academy has evolved to become one of the state’s top high schools. During the 2018-2019 school year, it was one of only nine public high schools in Oklahoma (out of 467 statewide) to receive an “A” grade from the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and then in 2020 it ranked sixth in the state by U.S. News & World Report in its best high schools in the country survey released this past spring.
For more information visit hardingfinearts.org.
