Kennedy Center success celebrated by community
School officials, community members celebrate ongoing partnership with Kennedy Center
Hamilton County leaders and educators are celebrating the ongoing success of a partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts aimed at giving all children better access to arts education.
In October 2018, Hamilton County Schools and ArtsBuild announced that Chattanooga and Hamilton County were selected as the 26th site for the Kennedy Center’s Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child program, which for almost a decade has helped communities across the nation create long-range plans for providing art to students in grades K-8.
At a news conference Monday, ArtsBuild Interim President Rodney Van Valkenburg announced the next steps in the program’s process, which include hosting community visioning sessions across the district, orientation sessions for organizations and artists, and developing a roster of community resources in the coming months.
“It’s just not bringing arts organizations and artists and arts educator together to talk,” he said. “You bring the community together to talk about how to improve education through arts education. This is the start of something — something we think is very exciting.”
The Any Given Child partnership is a five-year program, led by the Kennedy Center, one of the nation’s leading arts programs. The three phases of the program include the strategic planning phase in year one, with an audit of existing arts education; the implementation phase in years two, three and four; and the sustaining phase in year five and beyond.
Representatives from dozens of organizations — including the school district, county government, the city of Chattanooga, ArtsBuild, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, Chattanooga 2.0, The Enterprise Center and dozens of local arts organizations — formed the community arts team.
As the partners move into year two, the team has met with artists and arts organizations across the city as well as surveyed more than 1,100 Hamilton County educators and administrators.
The team found that 96% of those surveyed want to collaborate with other teachers to integrate art into their instruction and 67% believe the arts have a positive impact on teaching.
Since last fall, the team also found that significant gaps exist in local middle and high schools in terms of the amount of art programming as well as a lack of equity when it comes to the variety and amount of programs offered among schools across the district.
Schools Superintendent Bryan Johnson said district faculty believe arts education is an important component in educating students.
He has supported arts education since taking the helm of the district in July 2017. In 2018, he included seven new art teachers in the fiscal year 2018-19 budget and hired a district-level lead arts teacher.
“We’ve made a commitment in our budget to increasing the arts in our school system,” Johnson said.
This year, Johnson hoped to add 10 more art teachers for the 2019-20 school year but had to reduce the increase to only five more teachers after a $34 million budget increase was shot down by the Hamilton County Commission.
Nevertheless, Johnson emphasized Monday that art education is important.
“The arts are so, so important,” he said. “We are excited to build on what’s already happening and take it to the next level.”
Officials said one of the biggest goals of the partnership is to identify community resources and connect artists and educators.
Claire Stockman, lead arts teacher for the district, said getting community members, artists and educators and even students working together is the vision.
“We definitely believe that this work in the community sets the vision for the arts in the schools and how it collaborates with partners in the community,” Stockman said.
Jeanette McCune, director of school and community programs at the Kennedy Center, said the work had only just begun in Chattanooga, but thanks to experiences from the program’s more than two dozen other sites across the nation, she knows it will be rewarding.
The initiative “leverages the power of strategic, coordinated arts education to ensure every child has equitable access to a quality arts education,” McCune said. “It has been rewarding working with the ChattanoogaHamilton County community over the last year through the strategic planning phase of the program. The excitement and commitment of the community are inspiring. We are pleased that the community is on its way in working towards quality arts education for all students in Hamilton County.”