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NYC Arts in Education Roundtable

Testimony to the New York City Council Committee on Education — March 18, 2024

4 minutes

Hearing: Committee on Education Preliminary Budget Hearing
Hon. Rita Joseph, Chair

Thank you to Chair Joseph, fellow Committee Members and Council staff, for your passion, leadership, and support of arts education in New York City. 

My name is Kimberly Olsen, and I am the Executive Director of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable. We are an arts service organization that works with thousands of artists, educators, and cultural organizations each year to improve and advance arts education in NYC. I’m testifying as part of the It Starts with the Arts coalition — calling on our city to prioritize funding for arts education in NYC schools and communities in the FY25 budget.

Transforming our city’s schools starts with the arts.

Arts education is an essential component of a well-rounded education. Dance, music, theater, visual arts, and media arts provide evidence-based solutions for engaging the whole child. Arts education nurtures social-emotional health and wellness, prepares students to enter the workforce, improves academic outcomes in the classroom, and increases parent involvement and student attendance. Yet today these opportunities are available to only some of NYC’s 1M students.

In New York City, arts education is historically underfunded, inconsistent, and inequitable. According to the city’s Annual Arts in Schools Report, 67% of eighth-graders did not meet the New York State Education Department’s requirements and guidelines for arts education, which recommends students have access to at least two different arts disciplines. That number has remained largely unchanged since 2015, while the number of certified arts teachers citywide has dramatically declined. 

Since 2019-2020, NYC Public Schools have lost 425 full-time certified arts teachers (representing a 14.88% decrease from the 2019-2020 and 2022-2023 school years) — leaving thousands more students without a dedicated arts teacher in their school. During the hearing we learned that 307 schools do not have a certified arts teacher. Due to a lack of transparency, we don’t know what schools and districts have been impacted. 

The combined impact of proposed budget cuts, the loss of federal stimulus money set to expire on June 30th, and lack of transparency stands to only widen the access gap for years to come. Let us not take it out on our students or their future. Programs that foster student engagement, creativity, mental health, and community rejuvenation must be prioritized. 

New York City must ensure that our schools offer all students the rigor, encouragement, and inspiration they need to learn and thrive in today’s classroom. To lay the groundwork for universal access to arts education, the City must:

  • 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.
  • Hire certified arts teachers ($38M): Ensure that all schools have at least one certified arts teacher, by bolstering the pipeline of certified arts teachers via supplemental certification program and filling arts staffing gaps (closing the equity gap for at least 307 schools).
  • Replace Expiring Federal Covid-Era Funds for Arts ($41M): Save arts education programs on the chopping block due to expiring federal funds, including arts initiatives, programming to support student social-emotional wellbeing and academic recovery through the arts, and Summer Rising.
  • Restore and Enhance “Support for Arts Instruction” initiative funding: Build on city’s down payment and boost allocation from $4M to $6M.
  • Improve data transparency by compelling NYC Public Schools to provide a school-by-school breakdown of the state of arts education in public schools via a Legislative Services Request, T&C, and/or Oversight Hearing.
  • 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).

Our city’s young people represent the vitality of our city. Please prioritize investment in arts education and in NYC’s future because success starts with the arts. 

Thank you for your attention and consideration.

Kimberly Olsen
Executive Director
NYC Arts in Education Roundtable
kolsen@nycaieroundtable.org