Saluda Trail Middle School is a school rising from the ashes of Covid fallout. We are regaining strength from an abundance of faculty and staff turnover. We have had high turnover rates among our academic teachers, bookkeeping, and administration, including our building principal which has changed 4 times in 3 years. This has greatly affected the strength of our programs. Fortunately, our Arts Department has been consistent throughout with the exception of a couple of teachers who retired. We are working hard to bring our school back to the powerhouse of education that we were known to be in the community and in the state. Our school is in the suburbs of Rock Hill. We are between our largest feeder elementary school and the high school that most of our students attend. This has allowed the three schools to work toward vertical alignment as STEAM schools. We have a high poverty rate with 66% of students receiving free or reduced lunch. We became a school of choice when after years of work to integrate the arts into the curriculum our principal fought to add the A into our STEM program. This opened a world of opportunity for our students. Our mission is to provide an artistically engaging educational environment that allows all students to imagine, explore, express, and create, thus making their lives more meaningful. We have put this to practice by diversifying the arts curriculum without adding more arts teachers. Most of our arts teachers teach 2 to 4 different types of arts classes. Our high school has added some of these courses to their curriculum allowing our students to continue to grow in those areas. We have also been able to bring in artists-in-residence and take students to venues to connect their learning to future opportunities.