Education & School Construction Capital Budget Hearing

Good Afternoon. Thank you Chairman Jackson and Chairman Weprin and members of the Committees on Education and Finance for the opportunity to testify today on the proposed capital budget for the Department of Education and the School Construction Authority. I am Doug Israel, Director of Research and Policy for The Center for Arts Education. 
 

The Center for Arts Education (CAE) is dedicated to ensuring that all New York City Public School students have quality arts learning as an essential part of their K-12 education. CAE pursues this mission through a wide range of activities that focus on raising awareness of the value and need of arts education for our public school students while providing tools and support for educators, parents, elected officials, funders, and others to act in order to provide quality arts learning for each and every student. Since its founding in 1996, CAE has provided $40 million in funding directly to schools to support the creation of quality arts education programs.
 

The central concern of The Center for Arts Education as it relates to the capital budget grows out of our years of experience working in public schools in New York City and our knowledge of the lack of adequate space that exists for arts education in schools across the five boroughs. We have heard from principal after principal who [has been] forced to give up rooms that had been created for arts to accommodate other needs, effectively limiting their ability and desire to provide quality arts learning for their students.
 

Over more than 10 years CAE has witnessed the power of arts education in engaging students in learning and providing alternative avenues for achievement. Research proves learning in the arts enhances learning in other subject areas and contributes to a student's overall development, provides students with opportunities to work collaboratively, develop creative and critical thinking skills, and develop innovative solutions—all 21st century skills that employers in New York City and around the world are looking for. 
 

As aptly stated in the DOE’s 2006-2007 Annual Arts in Schools Report: “The ideal physical environment for arts learning is one that is dedicated to the arts discipline and appropriately and comfortably equipped with the specific equipment and supplies needed to optimize students’ experiences.”

 

As schools are becoming increasingly overcrowded due to residential housing expansion, and as buildings that once housed one school population are now housing two or three, and as school budgets are being squeezed due to a number of factors, the likelihood that our city’s school children are being afforded access to spaces that are equipped for teaching and learning in the arts is not very good.
 

The likelihood that students rehearsing for the school band—in those limited number of school’s where this opportunity still exists—are doing so in a properly equipped music room is not very good. 
 

The likelihood that our schoolchildren are learning how to paint, sketch, or draw in an equipped art studio is not very good. 
 

The likelihood that the schoolchildren of a city that boasts of Broadway, Lincoln Center, and Alvin Ailey will get to rehearse in a studio with sprung floors or ballet barres or perform on an actual stage is not very good either.   

Even in those schools initially designed with proper arts space there is a lack of space. Music rooms, dance studios, and black box theaters have been divided, walled, and turned into academic classrooms or commandeered for other purposes. As reported by the Norwood News, a survey of local schools by City Council Member G. Oliver Koppel highlighted these trends. In just a portion of his district, PS 8 eliminated its science lab and converted two classrooms into four, and PS 56 and PS 86 converted its art, music, and science rooms into classrooms.

 

According to the DOE this “lack of available in-school arts space was one of the top three challenges to implementing arts education reported by all schools in [the] 2006-2007 Arts Education Survey.” 
 

The New York City Comptroller, in a policy report issued this month, highlighted these very same disturbing trends and noted that the 2005-09 DOE Capital Plan fails to adequately plan for the influx of new students from the residential construction boom. This failure to meet urgent school capacity needs in many communities will exacerbate what is already a troubling reality, as schools will continue to convert cluster space used for the arts, science or computers, to fill general capacity needs. The Comptroller’s report points out that if a school had to sacrifice one or more such rooms to accommodate past overcrowding, these rooms are considered part of classroom space going forward. 

 

The School Construction Authority is charged with ensuring arts spaces for new schools that will house over 500 students and its amended plan for the upcoming year outlines amendments to the budget for auditorium upgrades, but makes no mention of budgeting or work in progress to reclaim lost arts spaces or create new space in existing schools. While adequate arts space is only one of the many aspects that are essential to provide a well-rounded education, it is an important one nonetheless, and one that will whither if we do not keep the spotlight on the schools in this regard.

 

We urge the council to request that the DOE and the SCA provide a detailed spending plan on upgrades and creation of arts spaces other than auditoriums in the city’s public schools. We urge Council Members and Borough Presidents to investigate access to arts spaces in schools in their districts and direct capital funding to ensure our students are granted access to well-equipped facilities. And we call for a targeted use of capital funds to ensure that every single school has the space necessary to implement arts education that lives up to the New York State requirements and that provides the city’s school children with the educational opportunities that they deserve.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration of this request.