Allison Webber

Staff Writer

Dr. Barry Bowe will make many changes to Northwest inside and out. Bowe wants to strengthen the audition process “to make sure the students actually want to be here and have the ability to be successful.” Bowe said the process is going to be much more thorough than it was before. He is also putting in a new sound system in the Black Box. “I want to make our facilities the very best,” he said. Bowe has instructed the custodians to pressure wash the walks to make them look clean, and the old lockers will be repaired.

He plans to change the front of the school because “it looks like a prison.” Bowe also has asked the visual arts department to paint a mural on the outside of the school to make it look different than other public schools and, well, more like an art school.

Moving to Charlotte has changed Bowe. “I’ve lost weight from running around Northwest and eating lots of good salads from our cafeteria,” he said. He has been busy all day, often putting in additional hours “because there is so much to do around here.”

Although he worked at art schools in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Northwest is the first full magnet school he has worked at. When Bowe came to Northwest, he reconnected with an old friend already on the staff. Dr. Bowe and Mark Plant both went to the same high school, but at different times. “I taught his wife; she was in my chorus and newspaper classes,” he said.

Dr. Bowe views the different programs at our school and the performances these departments host with pride. “I [went to] Peter Pan and saw a lot of our students on stage,” he said. He was excited to see the middle and high school choral concerts. “Washington’s boys were pretty awesome,” he said.