SAM DEAN | The Roanoke Times

Mizellore Lexima plays a cello at Woodrow Wilson Middle School.

JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Fifth-grader Shaikira Calloway works on an art and math project at the Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science.

JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Jennifer Shamy, a veteran teacher, calls the Roanoke school system's arts advocate "fresh" and "inspiring."

SAM DEAN | The Roanoke Times

Jeff Midkiff, strings teacher at Woodrow Wilson, has been scrounging to get instruments for his students.

At the beginning of the school year, Jeff Midkiff, Woodrow Wilson Middle School's new strings teacher, took a quick inventory of his supplies and came to a dismaying realization.

"I found one broken dilapidated fiddle bow and no music," he recalled.

Yet there he was one morning last week, furiously conducting five violinists and four cellists as they clawed their way through a passage from Beethoven's third symphony, the "Eroica."

Midkiff wanted more thunder.

"Let's try this again, a little faster, a little louder. Fortissimo! He couldn't hear! Ready?"

A lot has changed for Midkiff and other arts teachers in Roanoke schools in the past six months.

After years of slowly drifting toward neglect, the Roanoke school system is working to improve its instruction in art and music.

The first indication of the turnaround came in August when Superintendent Rita Bishop told teachers in her inaugural speech that she would make the arts a priority.

The problem isn't limited to Roanoke. The No Child Left Behind law of 2001 put pressure on school systems to show improvements in English and mathematics, sometimes to the detriment of art and music programs.

A study last month from the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy found that 16 percent of the country's school districts reduced class time devoted to the arts since the law was passed.

Roanoke school officials say that a strong background in art complements other subjects and gives students a cultural literacy that will help them beyond standardized tests.

In some cases, arts classes may keep students motivated who otherwise might be tempted to drop out, they say.

Next year, officials want to pump $540,000 more into music and art programs, boosting total funding to more than $3.5 million out of a $149 million proposed budget. There may be more money on the way from grants. Most of the money will be used for field trips and supplies.

"A lot of the funding for the arts had been reduced substantially and we had a major backlog," said Curt Baker, the school system's deputy superintendent for operations.

Teachers say they have already started to see a difference. Now when Midkiff and other teachers need supplies, he said, "we just call Cyrus."

That's Cyrus Pace, an area musician hired in October to serve as fine arts coordinator. It's his job to help teachers get the supplies they need and to lobby for them in front of central administrators.

He's ambitious.

"Within a few years, people will be coming to Roanoke to figure out how in the world we're providing this level of arts education to our kids," he said.

He wants a strings program at every school in the city in two years, a residency program that will bring artists to schools for monthlong visits, outside expertise to help teach theater lighting and set design. And he wants to coordinate music and dance programs with language and social studies teachers.

"There's a lot to do, man," Pace said, getting excited. "But the good news is it's being done."

And teachers say they appreciate having an advocate in the school system's headquarters.

"He's fresh, he's inspiring, he's knowledgeable," said Jennifer Shamy, a veteran art teacher at Roanoke Academy for Mathematics and Science, an elementary school in Northwest Roanoke. "Cyrus is kind of pushy in wanting to communicate."

One of Pace's goals is to have one art and one music teacher in each elementary school, teaching out of their own classrooms. Right now, 12 art teachers and 13 music teachers handle the city's 21 elementary schools.

Elementary students get between 30 minutes and an hour of art and music instruction a week.

Shamy is fortunate that she only teaches at one school and that she has her own art room, with vaulted ceilings and muted tones.

"Right now I have only 40 minutes with them, but I'm going to make it the best 40 minutes I have with them," she said. "I'm not going to complain that I don't have 50 minutes."

It's unclear whether the amount of art instruction time would increase even if the school system hires enough new teachers, Pace said. The first priority right now, he said, is to make sure that teachers have what they need to teach.

At Woodrow Wilson in Southwest Roanoke, that means more instruments. Although Midkiff and Pace have scrounged together violins and cellos for students who can't afford them, they still need violas and double basses.

Right now, cellists have to play bass parts and violinists fill in on viola parts.

It lends music classes an improvisational skin-of-the-teeth atmosphere that Midkiff seems to encourage.

Last week, toward the end of his class, he sprung a new piece, "The Speckled Hen Overture" by William Hofeldt, a long arrangement full of tricky time signature changes.

He kept a sprightly tempo even though some of his students had never seen it before.

"This is like a line of black on the page," lamented Jordan Bazak an eighth-grade cellist who was struggling to keep up.

"Just grab a note and hold on," shouted Midkiff, barreling his way through the piece.