Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.
LA Fund’s “Arts Matter” campaign bus
Nearly a year after its launch last October, LA Unified’s “Arts at the Core” plan is getting a serious boost to help bring more music, dance, theater and visual arts back into arts-depleted classrooms thanks to a three-year, $750,000 initiative by the LA Fund.
Since 2008, LAUSD arts programs have been cut by 41 percent, resulting in a sorrowful ratio of middle school students to arts teachers, about 413 to 1, said LA Fund’s Executive Director Dan Chang.
The nonprofit plans to announce the first grant of $150,000 to the Music Center, which will train 20 teachers on how to bring arts into core academic classrooms at five LA middle schools, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Last fall, the organization launched a $4 million campaign to raise awareness about the importance of arts education that included artworks on public buses and other locations and endorsements by such artists as Justin Bieber and Barbara Kruger.
LA Unified “Arts at the Core” program plans to nearly double arts funding back to 2007-08 levels of about $32 million, but with a new spin or arts education:
Over the next five years, arts will be interwoven into math, science, English and social studies classes to ensure arts education is a foundation for all other subjects, and to make sure arts programs do not suffer from such drastic budget cuts in the future.
Disclosure: LA School Report publisher Jamie Alter Lynton is on the board of the LA Fund. Read the whole story at the LA Times.
Previous posts: Nonprofit Funds Big Arts Education Push; LA Fund Launches 2nd Arts Initiative; “Les Mis” Cast Turns Out for LA Education Fund