LaGuardia H.S. Principal Deepak Marwah: An Arts Education ‘Builds Bridges’

Deepak Marwah, principal of Amsterdam Avenue’s prestigious—and formerly embattled—Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, notes that his life changed by receiving an arts education there himself.

”For me, being a student at LaGuardia was transformative. I was from Eastern Queens. It took me three trains and a bus to get to LaGuardia each day. I’m first-generation, my parents were both immigrants, and I came to a school where I was experiencing an art form that was not like anything I’d ever experienced,” Marwah told Straus News. “I was singing Mozart, and I was learning how to sing classical art songs. More important than the songs, though, was the community-building.”

After graduating from LaGuardia in 1997 as a vocal music major, Marwah almost landed a lead role in a national production of the musical Rent. He quickly took the loss on the chin, however, because he “loved teaching music as much as I loved performing it.”

After getting a graduate degree in music performance, he became a singing teacher at his alma mater, the school he now leads. He held the teaching role for six years.

“The power of the arts is not just to perform, but to tell stories and to build bridges,” Marwah said of his teaching style. “Now, as principal, I’m continuing that. I’m trying to create opportunities for students to not just experience the arts for themselves, but to understand how important they are as a vehicle to make the world a much more beautiful place.”

His tenure has come with some changes to the way LaGuardia presents itself, which is not unusual given the history of notable alterations that have defined the high-profile school. LaGuardia, after all, was created by merging the High School of Music & Art with the School of Performing Arts in 1984. Music & Art had been made famous, no pun intended, by inspiring the 1980 musical-drama film Fame (and the spinoff television show).

Now, arguably in line with the bridge-building ethos Marwah champions, he recently brought LaGuardia’s six “siloed-off” studio programs—which create a system of arts specialization at the school—together for a 40th-anniversary ceremony last year.

“There was instrumental music, vocal musical; technical theater did a light show,” he recounted. “We had dancers from the dance department, we had spoken word from our drama department on top of orchestral playing. There were fine-art projections throughout,” he added.

Such a display of proud unity is perhaps a telling symbol, given the not-so-recent history of turmoil in the school prior to Marwah’s leadership role, which he took on in August 2023.

His predecessor stepped down in March of that year, after sparring with parents over an issue that had led to the ouster of her predecessor in 2019; namely, the balance of academics and art education. Marwah’s immediate predecessor was accused of diluting academic rigor in favor or arts, which parents feared put students at a disadvantage on college applications; the previous principal had found disfavor by shifting toward academics and diluting the arts.

Marwah, for his part, is clear about what LaGuardia stands for. “We provide a very comprehensive high school that is arts-focused. What does that mean? You’ll be taking arts classes for three to four periods per day. We also offer 20 AP [Advanced Placement] classes,” he said.

“Yet what we’re trying to let people know . . . is that if your true passion is STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], you need to make sure you go to a school that offers those opportunities. We will certainly prioritize your arts, and then we'll do everything we possibly can to get you everything else,” he added. He said that 80 percent of students reported being able to attend the courses they wanted. “Colleges tell me time and time again that they love our students.”

Marwah intimated that part of the problem was the lack of higher-up engagement with the student body: “I’m in the hallways. I’m trying to repair some of the things that took place in the nine years before I got here. Coming here, I wanted to rebuilt trust and transform the school climate through real transparent leadership.”

It certainly appears that this approach contributed to why he got the job in the first place, at least according to the former president of the school’s Parents Association, Jamie McShane; making a good impression on such an organization was undoubtedly crucial to how tension over school offerings would decrease.

Out of a few finalists in their search, McShane told Straus, Marwah completely stood out as a “natural communicator” who “loved” his alma mater.

LaGuardia’s status as a public high school, Marwah pointed out, is “extremely important” for students who “may not be able to afford arts-making at this level.”