STATE ARTS EDUCATION GETS $1 BILLION BOOST
Prop 28 promises new funding source to teach music, art in K12 schools
Five cities, nine schools, six subjects and over 20 classrooms filled with kids.
That's a typical week for art teachers like Kim Agnew, whose nomadic ritual has come to define how California's K-12 public schools have traditionally stretched meager funding for arts education.
“Sometimes, the kids' only access to dance is one day a week for half an hour, and that's it,” said Agnew. “I'm all they get.”
From Berkeley to Brisbane, the 56-year-old enters classrooms with a suitcase of ribbons, scarves, speakers and instruments from around the world. Sometimes, she brings a chekere — a percussion instrument made from a dried gourd. Other times, she's brought her jewelry equipment, filled with everything needed for students to make metal rings, necklaces and bracelets “soft as butter.”
After more than 20 years teaching dance, jewelry making and arts in the Bay Area, Agnew has never been employed full-time — with benefits — by a school. Most districts couldn't afford it, although many hope that soon, that could change.
In November, Californians voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 28, which promises nearly $1 billion of new funding to support arts education in the classroom every year. But as the state faces a $22.5 billion budget deficit, some schools are wondering whether that new funding will be enough.
“Could Prop. 28 help in theory? Yes,” said Patricio Angulo, Agnew's husband, and a drum teacher with arts education nonprofit Living Jazz. “Will it, and can it? That remains to be determined.”
Today, only one in five California public schools has teachers dedicated to the arts. That gap is often filled by nonprofit organizations like Living Jazz, private companies that contract teachers to multiple schools, or instructors hired by a school district to visit classrooms throughout their networks.
Because of that, schools throughout the Bay Area often lack full-time music,
arts and dance teachers for each campus — relying instead on a group of educators whose travel itineraries extend for miles. Cesar Mendez covers four schools each day: three in Mountain View and one in Santa Clara. Bryan Dyer just finished a semester at two classrooms: one in Oakland and the other in San Francisco. Tainah Harvey teaches dance to six classes in Richmond and Oakland — and just like her mother, who taught dance too, she's never been able to settle at one school.
“It is a really large problem, and it's also a decades-long problem,” said Danielle Bunch, who leads communications at the arts education advocacy group Create CA. “That's always been about funding, and about people not understanding the true value of arts education.”
Living Jazz is one of many organizations in the region that connects music teachers to public schools. Though the organization focuses on under-resourced elementary schools, other groups place teachers at schools across the region, often using funds raised by a school's Parent Teacher Association or grants raised by the organizations themselves.
Proposition 28 is meant to increase money flowing into arts education, ultimately creating 15,000 new, certified teacher positions in California's public schools. Though the details won't be ironed out until the state budget is finalized later this year, in theory, the new funding would double the current number of teachers employed in the arts — and, many hope, bake arts education into the curriculum of public schools.
Even so, some weary teachers are worried it won't be enough.
As the proposition now stands, funding will be tied to two factors: school size and the proportion of students from low-income households.
Though the design of that allocation is intentional, Indi McCasey, a creative consultant who works with Bay Area school districts, said it will result in extreme variation among schools, and potentially leave smaller schools without enough money for a full-time teacher.
“The schools with the largest student populations — like high schools — are the ones that are going to receive the most money toward a full-time position,” said McCasey. “But it's really interesting because a lot of those (schools) already have fulltime positions.”
Those that are really lacking in arts education, McCasey said, are elementary schools. Because of their size, McCasey projects salaries funded through Prop 28 to fall within a wide range: in Oakland, McCasey calculated $28,508 for an elementary school with just under 200 students and $92,318 for one topping 630.
Some schools are also struggling to square the increase of Proposition 28 funding with cuts to a different revenue stream — one-time grants for arts, music and other flexible spending issued last year. Some districts utilized that grant for salaries and pensions, while other schools have been using it to pay for arts education.
Gov. Gavin Newsom's proposed budget included a reduction of $1.2 billion from that grant — roughly one-third of its initial amount. In some schools, including Maya Lin Elementary School in Alameda, the money reduced from the flexible grant leaves a gap larger than Proposition 28 funds are expected to fill. And since Proposition 28 funding is supposed to be for hiring new teachers, not sustaining old ones, a longstanding art teacher's livelihood is on the line, according to parents involved with the school.
“How do we reconcile this great achievement (of Proposition 28) with the reality of what it means for the folks who are left with all the pieces that don't necessarily fit together?” said Susie Lundy, the mother of a first-grader in that art teacher's class.
Despite the implementation challenges, the arts education community is hoping Proposition 28 will make a difference, and hopeful that schools will utilize the funding in the right ways.
Everything she does, Agnew says, is worth it. And because of that, she'll keep doing what she can to bring arts education to her students.
“My hope is that there's more funding and more education out there,” Agnew said, “and people who want to do it.”
Proposition
28 is meant to increase money flowing into arts education, ultimately creating
15,000 new, certified teacher positions in California's public schools.