Arts Groups and Educators Push For Dedicated Arts Funding at Council Hearing

New Threatened Budget Cuts Highlight Need to Protect Arts Funding

NEW YORK, December 2, 2009 -- Arts groups and educators called for restoration of dedicated funding for arts education at City Council hearing last week. A coalition of organizations -- led by The Center for Arts Education and joined by the unions representing public school principals and teachers – say that threatened budget cuts highlight the need to protect a baseline level of funding. These advocates were also joined by arts celebrities Bill Irwin and Tom Chapin, who performed a song he wrote about the need for arts education: “You Can’t Spell Smart Without Art.”

Principals across the city are girding for threatened cuts at the State and City levels. “The threat of mid-year budget cuts further highlights the need to protect vulnerable funding for art, music, dance and theatre programs in public schools,” said Richard Kessler, executive director of CAE.

“Parents, educators, students, cultural and community organizations are coming together to say that the emphasis on high-stakes reading and math tests has created incentives for school leaders to deemphasize the role of the arts in a well-rounded education,” said Kessler. “Arts classroom space and arts educators are in short supply while arts class time gets lost in the mix. Unless a minimum level of funding for arts education is guaranteed, we will never be able to ensure that every child in every school receives a quality arts education.”

In testimony presented to the Council, the union that represents public school principals announced for the first time its support for reinstating dedicated funding for arts education. According to testimony by Ernest Logan, president of the Council of School Supervisors & Administrators (CSA, the union that represents public school principals), “[c]onsidering the elimination of Project ARTS and greater cuts expected to school budgets, we may be looking at a perfect storm brewing for arts education. While CSA believes that Principals need a large measure of autonomy over the way they run their schools, we believe that the DoE must restore mandated funding for arts education for all NYC schools.”

“It is critical that the DoE create a dedicated funding line with budget allocations for schools to prevent more declines in arts education and capitalize on the benefits of arts education for children,” according to Logan’s testimony.

[The United Federation of Teachers, the union representing New York City’s public school teachers and other nonsupervisory school professionals also testified in favor of dedicated funding for arts education. According to prepared testimony of UFT president Michael Mulgrew, which was delivered by UFT VP Karen Alford, “the biggest obstacle facing us [are] budget cuts. We know that when budgets get cut – as they have this year – the arts are among the first program to be downsized or eliminated….. [T]he DoE should properly support schools in this regard by restoring arts funding as a stand-alone budget line and giving schools their proper per-pupil allocation for arts education.”]

A City Council resolution (#837) calling for a minimum level of funding for arts education at all public schools – along the lines of the former Project Arts initiative – enjoys the support of 33 Council Members. CAE has led a coalition of parents, educators, students and cultural and community organizations in support of Resolution # 837 and restoring dedicated funding for arts education. Councilmember Robert Jackson, chair of the Council Education Committee, concluded the hearing by saying he was optimistic the resolution would pass.

A City initiative called Project Arts was a catalyst in restoring arts education to city public schools after a sharp decline in the 1970s. However, the City lifted the requirement that principals spend Project Arts funds directly on the arts at the beginning of the 2007–08 school year. Since then, there has been an overall decline in the percentage of a school’s budget spent on the arts, including a decrease in school spending on the hiring of arts teachers, the purchase of supplies and instruments, and the contracting of services from arts and cultural organizations to deliver arts education directly to students.

CAE testimony