Today, the New York City Council released its preliminary budget response. In response, Kimberly Olsen, Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable issued the following statement:
“The arts are essential — dance, theater, music, film, visual, and literary arts are what make New York so special, and research shows that arts education promotes students’ mental and developmental growth while boosting their academic engagement. But not every student has equal access to the arts, and expiring federal funds for arts education threaten the already insufficient staffing of arts teachers at schools across our city. Thankfully, city lawmakers understand the need to expand student access to arts education and ensure every school has a certified arts teacher. We applaud the City Council, including Speaker Adams, Finance Chair Brannan, Education Chair Rita Joseph, and Council Member Keith Powers, for prioritizing arts education, which includes funding for a certified arts teacher at every school and the restoration of expiring stimulus funds. We’re confident that Mayor Adams will recognize the need to invest in arts education as an evidence-based solution to supporting our city’s students — because it starts with the arts.”
Background
Last week, the New York City Arts in Education Roundtable joined with actors, students and educators to launch “It Starts with the Arts,” a campaign urging the Mayor and City Council to save the expiring $41M of arts education funding from COVID-era funding and pushed for greater transparency between how the city schools are spending the arts education money. Currently, every student in New York City stands to lose arts programming if COVID-era stimulus funding is not restored. Between 2020 and 2023, public schools across the five boroughs lost 425 full-time certified arts teachers – that means roughly 1 in 7 school children do not have a full time arts teacher.
In addition to the saving the expiring federal funding, the It Starts with the Arts Campaign is calling on the city to:
- Require DOE arts funding be spent on the arts ($15M): Boost the per student arts allocation to $100 from $80.47, and require that money be spent on arts education.
- Ensure Every School Has a Certified Arts Teachers ($38M): Ensure that all schools have at least one certified arts teacher, closing the equity gap for at least 307 schools. This can be done in part by bolstering the pipeline of certified arts teachers via a supplemental certification program ($4M).
- Restore and Enhance “Support for Arts Instruction” initiative funding: Build on city’s down payment and boost allocation from $4M to $6M.
- Center Arts and Culture in Youth Development Programs: Allocate at least $5 million to fund arts and cultural education opportunities during Summer Rising 2024 and other DYCD programs to support public safety and continued community-building opportunities via the arts.
- Restore and Baseline Funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs: Reverse November ($20M) and preliminary budget cuts to DCLA ($15.5M) and restore/baseline FY23’s one-time addition of $45M to Cultural Institutions Group and all cultural organizations across the city ($45M).
- Improve arts education data transparency by compelling NYC Public Schools to provide a school-by-school breakdown of the state of arts education
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