Visual and performing arts magnet instruction for grades 4 through 8 defines La Mesa Arts Academy on Parks Avenue in La Mesa. The school embeds studio art, dance, instrumental music, and theater across every grade level through an interdisciplinary standards-based curriculum — a sequenced VAPA scope that distinguishes the magnet model from supplemental private instruction available through California School of Dance elsewhere in La Mesa. Part of the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, the academy enrolls approximately 1,057 students and operates as an intra-district magnet, drawing families from across the district's attendance boundaries through an application process. The Gifted and Talented Education program layers additional rigor onto the arts-integrated core, and character-education and leadership-development tracks run as parallel strands woven into daily instruction. The academy maintains full IEP and Section 504 compliance infrastructure, coordinating with external speech-language and occupational-therapy services — including SmallTalk Pediatric Therapy — when students require off-campus therapeutic support beyond what on-site staff deliver. Advanced-level theater productions require full technical staging with student-operated lighting rigs, sound boards, and costume fabrication, demanding interdisciplinary application of visual-arts construction techniques and music-composition skills developed across the five-year VAPA sequence.