Teachers fight to protect arts funding
| Thursday, Jan 22 2009 01:20 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 12:57 PM
SAMPLE SCHEDULE
There are numerous scheduling variations in KHSD’s career tech program depending on student interest, school site offerings and summer school options.
A sample schedule from the Santa Rosa City Schools sheds light on what a student focusing on a four-year vocal music pathway might take:
• Four years English
• Four years science
• Three years math and history
• Two years foreign language
• Four years choir
• One year physical education
• One year drama production and music theory
The budget for art materials is so scarce across the Kern High School District that teachers barter for them.
Arvin High painting and drawing teacher Jesse Aguilar described a recent e-mail request: “Looking for scratchboard, willing to trade for paint and other stuff.”
Aguilar, with 14 years of teaching experience, said the accounts teachers use to purchase art supplies have been frozen. He and other teachers fear even more money will be taken away from the arts not only because of the state budget crisis but implementation of a proposed career technical education program.
Teachers came out in force to a recent KHSD board meeting to talk about the program, under which students choose a college, career or individualized pathway. They were especially worried that access to fine arts classes will suffer for students focused on college admission requirements.
Arts, Media and Entertainment is one of 15 career pathways; in this path a student would take at least four semester courses specific to the arts.
Tom Jones, Arvin High’s band director, thinks the board should engage teachers to make sure the program is completely worked out before it gets under way.
“I want to be on board with it, but I can't buy into this with no research. I'm just asking for models and a fiscal impact,” Jones said.
“They've got the core program worked out,” he said, referring to English and math requirements. “What they have not worked out is how the pathway credits are going to fit in with band or choir and foreign languages, because foreign languages are counted as an elective.”
Jones teaches a popular rock history theory course in which students learn to play Chuck Berry and Beatles songs. But guitars wear out, and he doesn’t want to see the class suffer if equipment funding disappears.
ARTS A CAREER, TOO
KHSD board President Joel Heinrichs points to KHSD’s 20 to 25 percent dropout rate, and the low number of students ready for college programs as reasons not to delay the career tech program.
“We cannot be paralyzed by fear or uncertainty,” Heinrichs wrote in a letter supporting the plan.
KHSD’s director of career and technical education, Scott Cole, said there is enough room in a schedule to choose a pathway and take additional fine arts or music courses.
A KHSD student is required to take 220 credits, but in four years there is time to take 240, or four extra classes.
“A student could choose to take the agriculture pathway, but also choir or band or one of those programs,” Cole said.
In her 11 years as a visual arts teacher at Bakersfield High School, Nancy Putney pushed arts as a career path for students.
“A skill in drawing and painting can translate to computer jobs, and those people are courted, and it can be a lifelong career,” said Putney, who retired two years ago.
Putney decried the fact that arts teachers must scrape for art supplies and said fewer art courses translates to fewer opportunities for students.
Norma Savage, who taught art at BHS for more than 30 years, watched arts programs ride a “roller coaster” of funding over the years. And students suffer from it, she said.
“It's a proven fact that children who are involved in the arts, whether visual or performing arts, often do better in science and math, and their scores are much higher,” said Savage.
She pointed to students who took her jewelry class years ago as proof that arts are valuable: a Green Beret soldier who makes wedding bands for his friends and a store owner with more than $1 million in sales in 2007.
SANTA ROSA EXPERIENCE
Students at Santa Rosa City Schools, which implemented a career program for its class of 2004, can take a mix of courses from two or three pathways, said Nancy Miller, director of career pathways and community outreach.
Ninety-eight percent of Santa Rosa graduates are in the military or employed in their career pathway six months after they graduate.
But frustrations do arise when a required pathway course is offered at a specific time, forcing students to build a schedule around one class, Miller said.
Heinrichs acknowledged budget cuts will impact KHSD, but contends there is no better time to offer the program and manage it as effectively as possible with “whatever resources we have.”
“Every year we wait we're graduating a substantial number of students who are not ready for a four-year college, and we're losing students who don't make it to graduation. And the fiscal uncertainty won't change in a year,” Heinrichs argued.
Tom Jones and fellow teachers agree in principle, but want more say in the final plan.
“In education there's no such thing as a single decision, it's always a ripple effect,” Jones said.
