Hearing: New York City Council, Committee on Education — Preliminary Budget Hearing
Submitted by Kimberly Olsen, Executive Director
First a thank you to Chair Joseph, fellow Committee Members and Council staff, we are so grateful for your passion, leadership, and support of arts in NYC schools.
My name is Kimberly Olsen, and I am the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable. We work with thousands of arts educators and cultural organizations to support culturally responsive, trauma-informed arts education across the five boroughs.
Transforming our city’s schools starts with the arts.
Arts instruction and after school arts programming provide evidence-based solutions for engaging students in learning, increasing our parent involvement, improving academic outcomes, supporting student mental health, and promoting well-being.
Chancellor Bank noted earlier that ~90% of the money ($450M) that NYC Public Schools spend on arts education comes from individual school budgets — which shows that some investment in arts education is happening but it’s inconsistent across our system and there are still hundreds of schools that are out of compliance with state-mandated arts learning requirements. As of December 2021, 66% of middle schoolers aren’t meeting these NYS arts requirements. A recurring statistic. 17% of schools still lack a certified arts teacher all-together. Almost 30% of schools no longer partner with an arts or cultural organization.
We are also still waiting for updated data on the state of arts in our schools as we eagerly await the delayed release of our city’s annual arts ed reporting tool the Arts in Schools Report.
We want inviting, colorful, vibrant, and thriving school communities — that starts with the arts.
The Roundtable recommends that the City makes sure all schools can provide required arts instruction to all students by:
- Guarantee that the per capita funding intended for arts education is spent on arts education.
- Ensure all schools have at least one certified arts teacher and bring back the successful supplementary certification pilot program enabling cluster teachers to earn their arts content certification.
- Continue and increase funding to $6M for the “Support for Arts Instruction” initiative established this year by the City Council.
- Restore baseline funding of $24M for arts services cut at the onset of the pandemic.
- Improve data transparency by releasing this year’s Arts in Schools report and the accompanying school-to-school data breakdown
As NYC Public Schools recover from the pandemic and reimagine the student experience, the City should establish a realistic, equitable foundation for arts instruction in every school to support pathways to a bright, bold future for all.
Thank you for your time and consideration.