Original Research by School Decision on Arts Based School
Arts Based School is a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade charter district in Winston-Salem, Forsyth County. It operates two campuses: the North location downtown and the South campus in the Happy Hill area, with the South location opening in 2022 as an expansion that began with K-1 students. The two-campus model reflects the school's response to sustained demand; historically the school maintained a long waitlist. The South campus draws from a partly different set of ZIP codes than the North campus, which means enrollment geography shifted when the second location opened and affected which families could access seats.
The school serves a student body of about six hundred, distributed across nine grades from K through 8. The enrollment is largest in the younger grades and tapers through the upper elementary and middle years. The student population is predominantly white, with a meaningful presence of Black students and smaller shares of students identifying as multiracial, Hispanic, Asian, and other groups. Detailed household economic data such as free-and-reduced-price-lunch eligibility or special education and English learner enrollment counts were not available, so a parent would want to contact the school directly to understand the share of students in those populations.
State assessment proficiency data was not available for Arts Based School, so test performance cannot be assessed here. The school operates at an elementary and middle grade band, which means a four-year graduation rate does not apply. Chronic absenteeism sits in the top quartile among Forsyth County's districts, indicating notably low rates of chronic absenteeism relative to peer systems in the county. Per-pupil spending is in the lower range within the county, reflecting the school's resource allocation relative to neighboring districts.
The defining feature of Arts Based School is its curriculum model. The school's name and publicly reported mission center arts integration across subject areas, with the goal of teaching core academics through or alongside arts disciplines. This represents a pedagogical choice distinct from a traditional model and appeals to families seeking a different educational approach. A parent considering this school should understand that the curricular emphasis shapes the daily experience and teaching methods; this school is purposefully built around arts-based learning rather than offering arts as an add-on or elective.
The two-campus structure introduced a recent change in how families access the school. The expansion to Happy Hill aimed to increase available seats in response to demand and recalibrated the lottery system so different neighborhoods could draw from different campuses. For a family interested in Arts Based School, the second location may have opened new enrollment pathways or affected timing; checking current lottery information and understanding which campus serves your home address is now necessary.
Beyond chronic absenteeism, few comparable metrics are available in the data. A parent considering this school may want to reach out directly to discuss test results (if the school administers or receives state assessments that were not reported here), the specific content and scope of the arts-integration curriculum, the student composition and diversity work, and how the two-campus structure affects scheduling, programming, or access to resources.
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