Opinion: Don’t spend music and arts education funds on ‘operational costs’

Pablo Picasso reportedly once said that every child is an artist — the problem is how to remain so, once we grow up.

This unhappy subject — loss of creativity in the pursuit of knowledge, or framed another way, delegitimizing music and art education in the pursuit of “career readiness” — is a familiar theme in both storytelling and educational policy. Now we have another, paradoxical version: the marginalization of arts education by a local school district’s use of a state block grant intended for arts education.

The recent news reported on the use of a taxpayer-funded music and arts education block grant by the East Side Union High School District is not surprising given the current educational policy emphasis on STEM and the decades old underfunding of education in California. According to District financials, of the total grant amount of $13,267,936, 72% will be utilized for “operational costs.”

About  $1.5 million will go to music and arts “classes”. But that money is allocated to materials and professional development.

What the budget presentation to the East Side Union High School District Board does not elucidate is how the allocated operational costs will be spent. The presentation describes the district’s system emphasis on goals pertaining to equity, career readiness, graduation rates, achievement of English language learners, student behavior responses, attendance and engagement with homeless students. Nowhere does the presentation provide specific guidance or insights on how taxpayer dollars will be utilized to achieve the titled  goals of the block grant which are, presumably, the activity of actually teaching music and art.

The impact of this obfuscating non-allocation of grant funds is the further marginalization of arts education by those who should know better. Indeed the benefits of sequential, rigorous arts education provided to students during the instructional day is a stated goal of the California Arts Council and many other arts education funders.

In fact, small and large arts education non-profits who seek arts education support must specifically provide samples of standard’s-based curriculum and other evidence of the grantee applicant’s sustainable capacity for instruction of standard’s-based arts education in California public schools, such as experience teaching music and visual arts, and an active partnership with a school site.

The numerous reports on tangible and intangible benefits of music and arts education are well documented. Among many other resources available through Californians for the Arts, there are statistics showing the benefits of a kid’s brain on music education, arts curriculum resources provided by the California Arts Education Association and California Department of Education, and data illuminating the access to arts education gap experienced by underserved communities, like the students in this district.

We can and should consider the evidence of the intangible benefits of an arts education. This is a happy paradox, too often ignored by policy wonks but definitely understood by legislators with the power to cut arts funding when art making or learning threatens prevalent points of view.

You can find this evidence on YouTube — like the video of Elementary Public School 22 of Staten Island performing “Don’t Give Up On Me.”

Or the many YouTube videos of San Jose music students, like the rock out performances at the mariachi festival or the stunning ensemble artistry of San Jose’s Firebird Youth Orchestra or the numerous jazz concerts by the San Jose Jazz High School All Stars.

With all this proof to support increased funding for arts instructional hours at the tips of District bureaucratic fingers, why are the line item expenditures for operational costs a mystery? To answer this we might remember the cultural acuity of children and youth in social groups is profound, and evident in a natural musicality kids freely use to explore musical sounds. Youthful music is unique, purposeful, self-motivated, impressively improvisational. It’s a music occupied with curiosity and enchantment, as I’m sure the music educators at San Jose Jazz, or any mariachi conference, or the Firebird Youth Orchestra will attest.

Why not take advantage of this baked in motivation to learn and show us the numbers? The answer may be in the reported District assertion that the grant is needed to help the District “stay afloat.” If this is the case, will raiding an arts block grant help ESUHSD face the music?

Marcela Davison Avilés is managing partner of TomKat MeDiA and founder of Chapultepec Group.