Dear Carol,
Thank you for your letter and commitment to the future of our schools. As an Arts teacher at the middle school level I have concerns for equity in the Arts for 6-8th graders across the district. In many of the k-8 programs there are so few or no licenced Arts teachers. In those that do have them the contact time with the students does not even come close to the classes that meet every day, all year in their fellow Middle School models. I am worried for the futures of their highschool programs. Will they be able to offer the same level of instruction, if their incoming students have never had arts instruction by certified instructors offered to them.

Sadly , in looking at our current F.T.E. in our K-8 programs, I found 11 schools not having any kind of Art elective F.T.E.There were 23 schools where there is less than a .6 F.T.E in Visual Arts, where sixth to eight grade students attend. I teach at a school given much the same F.T.E. as any other, but we have chosen to put it in the arts.Here at da Vinci ,our students have 5.5 arts teachers. We are a school of choice with a small enrollment. We can’t be the only option, nor should we ,for quality instruction. All students in the middle years, regardless of where they attend school, should have the opportunity for substantial instruction, that can build the skills required to meet 8th grade benchmarks. Watered down programs give the illusion that we are solving the problem, but the future looks bleak for art in our high schools, and our communities. Less options should be given to administrators to slash arts programing, if we are ever to see equity.
Sincerely,
Mary Morris
Art Teacher
da Vinci Arts Middle School

Let’s trim the fat, not the bone. It’s a lot easier for a $90K + administrator to absorb a freeze than a $20K custodian.

I would also add journalism/newspaper to all high school offerings. It wouldn’t require much added expense or even additional FTE. Any reasonably motivated Engish teacher can master the fundamentals of news writing, and periodically publishing a school newspaper/newsletter can be done fairly cheaply. At Lakeview High School (where I taught journalism and drama in addition to language arts), we merely mimeographed the newspaper.

Both journalism and drama (and music, to some extent) are cross-disciplinary in nature. To achieve school equity, the district needs to be thinking in those terms.