The readiness is all, as Shakespeare put it. Planning ahead may be the key to making the most of the funds on the table, experts say. After decades of cutting and scrimping, arts educators finally have money to spend. It should be noted, however, that many arts advocates feel the California Department of Education, which is administering the program, has yet to provide sufficient guidance regarding the rules of implementation, perhaps due to lack of staff.
“It’s awesome and amazing, and we need it so badly,” Gamlen said. “There is solid arts funding coming for the first time that I can remember. Arts programs and electives are often the first thing on the cutting board, although they’re so crucial to student well-being.”
Her advice to schools is to first take the temperature of their community to see what parents, students and teachers are most passionate about, whether it’s high-tech animation or ancient Indian dance, and then dig in with serious planning.
“I do hope that parents and community members can join in and share their voices and tell schools what they would like to see,” Gamlen said. “We’re trying to encourage districts to go slow and have a plan. Have a one-year, five-year, 10-year plan. This money is coming in perpetuity.”
Some schools are going all in with a single artistic discipline that resonates most deeply with their students. The Pacifica school district, for example, plans to strike up the band, using Proposition 28 funds to have music embedded throughout the K–8 curriculum, she said.
“It’s a sequential music program,” Gamlen said. “Kids will finish second grade and they’ll know how to do X, Y and Z. And their third grade music teacher will know that and can take them further. I appreciate that they are going deep with one art form.”
Fillmore Rydeen, who is visual and performing arts director at Oakland Unified, notes that the OUSD already has a robust arts program, including music and dance, so that makes it more complicated to hammer out a plan than a school that previously had no arts at all. He is advising principals to begin planning but cautions against moving too hastily.
“There are a lot of different circumstances the principal may want to think about when they’re doing this,” he said. “What do you have currently? What would you like to add to it? Where does it make sense to add, and does that addition actually give more kids art?”
With only about 5,000 credentialed arts teachers in the state and a need for roughly 15,000, some warn of a coming arts teacher shortage. While some schools may tap working artists, as opposed to credentialed arts teachers, to flesh out their new programs, some say that may also create complications. For example, working artists may come into the classroom to teach their expertise, say, script writing or sculpture, as classified staff (PDF), but the classroom teacher also needs to be present.
“Where are we going to get the people to fill these positions, and if we fill the positions with unqualified people, how do we support them?” Rydeen said. “If you have no teaching credential, no teaching experience, but we put you in front of a classroom, sometimes it works out. But oftentimes folks struggle.”
By contrast, San Diego Unified, which also already has a vibrant arts education program, is planning to hire enough teachers to expand its arts program in five different genres: dance, music, theater, visual art and media arts.
“The new funding will be transformative because we are expanding all five programs,” said Anne Fennell, K–12 music program manager for San Diego Unified, “so that more students can have the arts as well as meeting the students’ needs in the arts classes that they want to study.”
Like a work of art, experts say it may well take time to craft and then fine-tune an arts ed plan.
“The classes should reflect what the students want and what the families want,” said Gamlen, “and what they want might be really different from what the school principals want.”
It’s also likely that the needs and wants of the student body will evolve over time. One cohort of students may be drawn to digital arts, another to dance. That’s why experts say most arts ed plans will be a moving target.
The therapeutic power of movement is one thing Gamlen hopes educators will consider as they explore their options in arts education. Sitting still for most of the day is trying for many children — particularly in the post-pandemic era. After months of online studies during the shutdown, many students struggle to focus in in-person school, and physical activity may be a balm for the anxious ones.
“Dance might feel extra to some administrators, but it’s such a great way to teach musicality and rhythm, and it can also be really culturally relevant to students,” Gamlen said. “It’s a way to teach history, and it’s very physical. Students with disabilities and English language learners can access dance in a different way than some of their other classes that might be much more verbal or text dependent.”
Many arts advocates suggest that the myriad challenges of launching a new program will almost certainly pay off in higher student engagement, which may be critical to boosting lackluster pandemic recovery efforts.
The restorative nature of the arts — giving children permission to express themselves against the backdrop of the alarming youth mental health crisis — may help spark joy in a generation traumatized by the stress and strain of the last few years.
“Joy is fundamental to the learning process,” said Shantel Meek, founding director of the Children’s Equity Project, an advocacy/research organization based at Arizona State University. “First, it’s critical for establishing intrinsic motivation for learning and associating positive feelings with school. Second, it’s important for mental health. Kids have been through a lot. Kids are still going through a lot. It is important for kids to feel joy in school because they are humans, and they deserve to feel joy in a place where they are spending much of their waking hours, like we all do.”
