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NYC Arts in Education Roundtable

Testimony: Preliminary Budget Hearing, Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, & International Intergroup Relations – March 18, 2026

4–5 minutes

Testimony: Preliminary Budget Hearing – Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, & International Intergroup Relations
Hon. Deputy Speaker Dr. Nantasha Williams
Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Thank you to Deputy Speaker Williams and the City Council for hosting today’s hearing and happy Arts in our Schools Month! My name is Kimberly Olsen, and I am proud to be the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable. I’m testifying as part of the It Starts with the Arts coalition — calling on our city to prioritize funding and policy change that improves arts education in NYC and supports its robust workforce.

The arts are the heartbeat of our great city. Dance, theater, music, media, visual arts, and literary arts are a vital engine for the city’s economy, cultural identity, and a critical component of a culturally-responsive education.

Yet, bureaucratic hurdles in contracting, the skyrocketing cost of living, and chronic inequities in access are stifling our City’s most vital resource — leaving our students and our creative workforce behind.

In NYC, arts education is a cross agency effort — employing a workforce of 11,000 teaching artists and 2,887 certified arts teachers. Cultural organizations and teaching artists work in partnership with in-school arts teachers to strengthen opportunities, support sequential arts learning, and provide arts instruction where schools lack an arts teacher altogether. For context:

  • Over 900 cultural organizations partnered with NYCPS in FY251
  • 84% of all responding schools partner with at least one cultural arts organization annually
  • 72% of schools hosted at least one CDF program during FY2022 (as reported by IBO at the April 2025 Oversight Hearing on Arts Education)2
  • 23% of schools report using external funding from cultural organizations to fund arts education

But our city doesn’t make this easy – contract delays (CASA and NYCPS’ MTAC) mean late or unrealized start dates, loss of employment for artists, and lost educational opportunities. Inconsistency of year-over-year funding across agencies makes it difficult to build sustainable, long-term partnerships between schools and cultural organizations, and stable employment for our teaching artists.

This in turn has a trickle-down impact on the workforce, where many teaching artists only earn a median individual gross income of between $35,000 – $50,0004, with no access to health insurance through an employer. As a result, 79% of Teaching Artists do not feel their work sufficiently supports living in or near NYC3. Yet NYC is relying on this workforce.

Beyond the grave implications for our workforce, this continues to threaten arts education access and participation rates still rebounding from the pandemic. 31% of middle school students meeting state arts learning requirements simply isn’t acceptable. Unless our city takes action, we are at-risk of losing one of the most diverse and impactful parts of the cultural sector.

To sustain and grow this vibrant ecosystem, we must prioritize bureaucratic efficiency – ensuring our educators and artists are paid in a timely, efficient manner, and affordability – ensuring educators and artists can afford to live and work in the city that they inspire. We have a window of opportunity to define our city’s future: that starts with the arts. Therefore, I join my colleagues in urging our City to take action to protect our workforce and invest in our students. This includes:

ADDRESS COST-OF-LIVING CRISIS FOR ARTS EDUCATION WORKFORCE

  • Continue reforms to contracting with city agencies. specifically targeting NYCPS’ Multi-Task Award Contract (MTAC) and CASA contracts, to ensure timely contract remittance and payments, accessible processes, and fair per-class rates that reflect the true cost of programming and labor.
  • Launch insurance pilots to support teaching artist affordability. Aligned with Creatives Rebuild NY and the Center for an Urban Future, NYC can reduce economic precarity for the arts workforce by piloting a freelancers portable benefits program and a pooled insurance program for smaller orgs.
  • Restore and Baseline Funding for the Department of Cultural Affairs ($30M). Baselining this one-time addition supports arts organizations and workers city-wide, offering sector-wide stabilization and preventing further artist displacement.

PRESERVING & IMPROVING ARTS EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS

  • Require NYCPS arts funding be spent on the arts. Boost the per student arts allocation to $100 from $89.76, and require that allocated money be spent on arts education.
  • Ensure Every School Has a Certified Arts Teacher: Ensure that all schools have at least one certified arts teacher, in part by reviving the successful supplemental arts certification program ($4M) and funding a PE Works-inspired improvement plan using the already baselined arts education funding.
  • Restore and Enhance “Support for Arts Instruction” initiative funding. Increase allocation from $4M to $6M to meet city-wide demand for increased arts learning opportunities.
  • Improve arts education data transparency. Require mandatory reporting on school-level arts education access, participation/enrollment, spending, and MTAC procurement (R1129/R1180) via T&C.
  • Update the NYCPS Blueprint for Arts Learning to define sequential pathways for arts learning that integrate culturally-responsive pedagogy and reflect rapid advancements in media and technology (last updated in 2015).

Thank you for your attention and consideration.

Sources:
1 NYC Public Schools Arts Office 2024-2025 Arts in Schools Report: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15dgP8o30sHV25WomYMOZSNTxP1EQoYfw/view?usp=drive_link

2 Testimony on Cultural Development Fund Programs in NYC Public Schools: https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/arts-education-funding-testimony-april-2025_final.pdf

3 Roundtable Brief: Recommendations for NYC Public Schools Multi-Task Award Contract (MTAC) Process to Support Partnership with NYC Arts Vendors (published February 2025): https://bit.ly/47AzJRu

4 Paying for Professionalism 2025 – A Report on New York City Teaching Artist Compensation & Employment (published July 23, 2025): https://nycaieroundtable.org/advocacy/paying-for-professionalism-2025/