A ‘creative approach’
APS joins John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts program
More Albuquerque students will get to dance, sing, paint and explore other creative outlets thanks to a new partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Albuquerque Public Schools is the first New Mexico district to join Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child, a program that creates a tailored long-term arts education plan for grades K-8.
Twenty-one other communities across the country are already participating, from Juneau, Alaska, to Houston, and Fresno, Calif., to Trenton, N.J.
“It is not an easy thing to get to be selected — it is a long, hard, drawn-out process,” said Superintendent Raquel Reedy on Thursday during a news conference at Coronado Elementary.
“We are thrilled to death that we have this opportunity to work with the Kennedy Center and bring fine arts to our kids even more than we are already doing.”
Over the next nine months, Kennedy Center staff will meet with APS and community leaders seven times
to assess the current arts curriculum and chart a plan for the future. The implementation stage will take three more years.
Barbara Shepherd, director of national partnerships for the Kennedy Center, explained that center staff take their lead from the district.
“We come and we facilitate the meetings, but we don’t make any of the decisions — they are all locally made because we can’t know your community the way locals do,” she said.
To participate, APS provided $25,000 to help cover expenses like travel time and materials; in return, it will receive a series of consultations, workshops, professional development and other assistance worth $125,000.
Mayor Richard Berry said he is thrilled to see Albuquerque take part because art and music made him excited to come to school. Albuquerque’s inaugural poet laureate Hakim Bellamy will work with APS on the initiative and report back to Berry.
“The arts are so important to our youth’s development and I am excited to see how Albuquerque’s students thrive with this creative approach to education,” Berry said.
Research reinforces the value of arts education, particularly for at-risk kids.
A 2012 study from the National Endowment for the Arts found that students from lowincome homes were 10 percent more likely to finish a calculus class if they were exposed to arts. And students who had access to arts in high school were three times more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree, according to the NEA data.