Fifty-fifty Earlier Layoffs, Schools Lost 135 Arts Teachers

By Anna One thousand. Phillips
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Supporters of arts in the schools complain that art, music, theater and dance are among the first subjects to suffer when budgets are tight. A new survey of New York Metropolis schools shows that this may, indeed, be the case.

For the first time in iv years, the number of certified arts teachers in the city's public schools is declining, co-ordinate to a report to be released by the Heart for Arts Education on Thursday.

In 2009-2010, at that place were 135 fewer arts teachers in the city schools than in the previous school twelvemonth, after principals chose to cut positions from their budgets or not supercede arts teachers who left. The five percent drop puts the number of certified arts teachers working in the schools back to where it was in 2007, when the city first began to survey principals.

The situation is probable to worsen adjacent twelvemonth if the city goes through with its plans to layoff 4,100 teachers to salvage $269 million. Estimates released in February project that 350 of those let go will be arts teachers, which would exist a fifteen percentage drop in art, music and performing arts teachers.

"When yous look at those numbers, information technology paints a really dismal picture," said Doug Israel, the managing director of research and policy for the Center for Arts Instruction. "These cuts mean you're more or less giving upward on the arts."

Under the proposed budget, several other groups of teachers, like librarians and concrete education teachers, are expected to be cut by the same percentage, while career teachers and engineering are likely to be cutting past 19 per centum. Reading and math teachers are expected to be cut at a much lower rate.

Considering of the cuts last year, some schools greatly reduced students' access to arts classes — for example, giving students only a one-half-twelvemonth of classes, rather than a full year. Simply other schools accept constitute talent in their teaching ranks.

At Heart School 57 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, Principal Celeste Douglas surveyed her teachers to run into who would be willing to teach fine art classes. At present a science teacher runs a choral group, while a paraprofessional teaches photography.

"Nosotros are finding the passions in our teachers and using them to our best advantage," Ms. Douglas said. "For a schoolhouse with very petty funding for fine art, we're doing a lot."

Many other schools have partnerships with art organizations that offer programs free, or rely on parent associations to embrace costs.

Schools, nonetheless, have also cutting back greatly on other spending for the arts. Since 2007, when the city began surveying schools' art teaching, spending on supplies has dropped to slightly more than $2 one thousand thousand from over $ten one thousand thousand. In a arrangement with more than a one thousand thousand students, that comes to most $2 per student.

A Department of Education official said decisions to cutting spending on supplies have come up not from the urban center but from principals, who can decide how to prioritize their budgets. The official said principals were redirecting money they one time spent on supplies to forestall even farther educational activity reductions by roofing art teachers' salaries.

The Center for Arts Education bases its report on data from an annual survey of city principals past the Section of Education.

Despite the cuts in personnel and supplies, more city elementary schools reported that they were meeting the state's requirements on arts programs and hours of didactics in the arts: based on the survey data, 51 pct of urban center simple schools met the state goals, up from 42 percent the year before.

The Department of Educational activity has a 5-year federal grant to create new arts assessments to measure what students are learning by looking at performances and portfolios of work. Over the next two weeks, the city plans to select eighty public schools to participate in the new assessments.

Mr. Israel said he was skeptical that more than schools could meet the land's art requirements when at that place were fewer certified arts teachers.

"They say they're doing more with less, but it'due south nigh unfathomable that that's really happening," he said. The group is planning to hold a rally on the steps of Metropolis Hall this forenoon.

The schools chancellor, Dennis Yard. Walcott, said the urban center's schools have go a national model for arts instruction during the final eight years, and remain and then, exposing more than children to arts education despite reductions in spending. He said this was accomplished "through strategic partnerships with community organizations, nonprofit groups, and through the creativity of our principals and teachers."

He added, "And so fifty-fifty with impending layoffs, I am confident we will be able to build on the significant progress nosotros have fabricated revitalizing arts in the schools."