Eighth graders at MS 223, the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, in the Bronx, will soon learn about American history through an unusual lens, thanks to a grant the school just received from the Bronx Council of the Arts. Nicholas Thompson, a history teacher and musician, will teach students about how the guitar and its music migrated from the South to cities in the North after the Civil War.
This is just one of many art programs that the school's art coordinator, Rose Greco, and principal Ramon M. Gonzalez, have implemented to increase interest and skills in the arts and keep students engaged in their academic coursework. While MS 223 has taken advantage of resources for the arts, many schools have cut their art programs.
"There are over 1,600 schools in the city, and therefore 1,600 different universes in terms of how the arts are looked at," explained Steven Tennen, executive director of ArtsConnection, an organization that fosters creative partnerships with teachers and public schools for teaching dance, music, theater and visual arts.
Has the quality of arts education in public schools improved over the last eight years? This question is difficult to answer, but Tennen's observation underscores the central problem: the wide difference between the quality -- and even the existence -- of arts programs from school to school. The most recent report by the Department of Education's Office of the Arts and Special Projects demonstrated that while there has been progress in some areas, a significant percentage of schools are not in compliance with state mandates for arts education.
Between budgetary restrictions and Mayor Michael Bloomberg's emphasis on accountability, principals are focusing time, money and resources on improving students' test scores in math and English. Some arts program have suffered as a result.
A shift in funding, advocates say, reflects this. In 1997, then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani created a line item allocation in the school budget called Project Arts that allotted approximately $65 per student. However, in 2007, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein decided to fold the funding designated for the arts into overall school budgets and no longer require principals to spend that money specifically on arts instruction. Over the last three years, principals have been allowed to use this money at their own discretion, and the result has been a real disparity in the quality of arts instruction offered to students throughout the public school system.
Paul King, executive director of the Office of the Arts and Special Projects, said the department continues to spend money for arts education. "Over this last fiscal year for example, we spent over $326 million on arts instruction and that includes personnel, services and materials. So that $326 million represents about $296 per student, which is almost five times the amount of what the Project Arts allocation was," he said. "It does vary per school, so of course what has happened, and quite honestly happened to a degree even before with Project Arts, is that schools make individual decisions as to how much they are going to spend on the arts."
But the numbers can be misleading, according to Doug Israel, director of research and policy at the Center for Arts Education. "It’s not about the average number that every school is spending, which they say is over $300. It is about the schools that are spending $10 per student or $20 per student," explained Israel. "And for the most part, they are low-income schools that are struggling, and we think there should be there a real floor to ensure a base line of equity across all schools in the city."
According to a report published by the Center for Arts Education in October 2009, the New York City Public Advocate’s Office conducted a survey in 2008 of 100 randomly selected public elementary and 50 randomly selected middle schools, and found 9 percent of middle schools and 7 percent of elementary schools provided no arts education at all. Some schools, then, are spending zero dollars on arts education, On the other hand, some schools, particularly those with an arts focus, may spend far more than $300 a pupil.
New York state and the city mandate arts instruction for all students from pre kindergarten through high school and provide a detailed outline of requirements. Even though schools are under legal obligation to offer arts instruction, many fail to comply with the minimum requirements.
The 2009 Annual Arts Report collected data that indicated some positive changes in the quality of and access to arts education since 2006. These include a general increase across the board in the number of art disciplines offered in elementary, middle and high school as well as an uptick in the percentage of certified arts teachers except in middle school.
However, this data also shows that, in spite of the progress, schools have yet to meet the state mandates. According to the report, 83 percent of the participating elementary schools for 2008-2009 year offer the required four art disciplines, which would mean that 17 percent of schools are not in compliance with the state. In addition, high school and middle school students are required to take art classes from a certified arts teacher, and the report states that only 84 percent of high schools and 77 percent of middle schools have full-time licensed art teachers.
Many students go through school without receiving any instruction in dance or theater. Among the art disciplines, dance and theater are the ones least likely to be taught in elementary, middle and high school. According to the 2009 Arts in School Annual Report, 80 percent of elementary schools, 56 percent of middle schools and 41 percent of high schools in the 2008-09 year offered arts instruction in dance.
A solid arts education usually requires adequate materials and equipment, partnerships with cultural organizations, and certified arts teachers. But over the last three years, school spending on supplies and services for elementary, middle and high schools has decline. For instance, middle schools have suffered a 79 percent decrease in spending on supplies and equipment, and high schools have cut their spending on services such as cultural partnerships by 35 percent.
"How do you teach a visual arts class when you don’t have paint and canvasses or a music class without instruments?" commented Israel.
At the beginning of the fiscal year, the city cut schools budgets for FY 2010 by 4.9 percent, and the mayor is seeking additional cuts for the coming year. While these apply to all areas of education, arts advocates worry that the arts education budget will be hit particularly hard by these new cutbacks.
"Budget cuts have definitely had an impact on the schools this year. The usual schools we've always contracted for dance residencies did not have the money this year," said Lucie Santoro, program director for Covenant Ballet Theatre of Brooklyn. "They didn't even have money to send their students to see our educational performance of Ondine: the Sea Sprite on Feb. 24. We decided to drop our price to the performance from $10 to $5. Now we have seven schools signed up for the performance. I've never had a problem getting schools for our residency programs until this year."
The New York City Arts In Education Roundtable conducted a recent survey with its members reflecting on the 2009-2010 year. One question asked, "To what do you attribute this decrease [in cultural partnerships with public schools]?" The number one reason, with a response of 87.1 percent said this decrease was due "cuts in school budgets."
Since Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, standardized testing, particularly in math and English language arts, has been the top priority for schools across the country. Between that and Bloomberg’s stress on accountability, principals focus on students' test performance. To add to the pressure, if a Title I (low income) school continues to fail to meet the state requirements for four consecutive years, the principal can lose his/her job. As school budgets continue to shrink and more time is spent on standardized testing, principals struggle to find the funding for arts instruction.
"What’s really a shame is that some of the kids who can benefit the most from the arts and phys ed and those other subjects are the ones who are actually being stuck behind a desk for more hours per day and not being provided any other outlet besides testing, testing, testing and cram, cram, cram," said Israel.
Working with the largest public school system in the country, the Office of the Arts and Special Projects has taken great steps to ensure that principals have the resources and information they need to provide arts education. The office offers guidance through career development workshops, budget models, and an Arts & Cultural Education Services Guide, in addition to providing benchmarks and curriculum blueprints for each of the four art disciplines.
For the last three years, the Office of the Arts has put a huge effort into collecting important data on the arts by producing the Annual Arts in School Report. Because of its heavy reliance on self-reporting, some experts express skepticism as to the accuracy of all the numbers but still laud the report for the breadth of information.
"I think the Annual Art Report has been very important. I am not sure I agree with all the metrics, but there are metrics. There is a place to start from. There are real numbers for the first time. So the fact they are collecting data and that there is data to be gotten is pretty remarkable," said Tennen.
Nonetheless, schools are still not fulfilling state requirements and art advocates believe more measures need to be taken. State Sen. José Serrano, with the help of the Center for Arts Education, has presented legislation that would mandate a statewide audit to make sure schools are in compliance with state arts education requirements. If schools were found to be out compliance, then a "corrective action plan" would be developed with a detailed timetable for implementation.
"There is a lot of really powerful arts instruction happening in the system, but the difficulty is that there is not nearly enough of it, and some cases, kids are going with out it," explains David Shookhoff, the chair of New York City Arts in Education Roundtable. "And it is possible to go through an entire K-12 school education without really having anything like quality arts instruction. That’s the sad story, and the instruction being delivered is not uniformly high quality, but there is progress being made."
Nicole Gates Anderson is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn.Hundreds of undocumented children in the city's foster care system may be eligible for permanent residency, City Council members said yesterday.
The problem is no one knows it.
On Wednesday, Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Immigration Committee Chairman Danny Dromm announced a proposal that would make sure the Administration for Children's Services kept tabs on children's' statuses. Quinn and Dromm introduced a bill (Intro 3) that would require the administration promptly identify children who qualify for protected status from the federal government.
While in foster care, undocumented children are eligible for a special immigrant juvenile status from the federal government, which could lead the way to permanent residency and a green card.
"We unfortunately know little of how many documented children even exist in the system presently," said Quinn.
The bill would also require the administration to assist kids in immigration services and mandate the administration report back to the council on results.
Currently, said council officials, the city has no idea how many children in the foster system who are eligible for protected status actually receive it. Quinn said the Administration for Children's Services only has two staffers devoted to finding out children's immigration status.
Many, officials said, slip through the cracks.
Quinn suggested this new legislation could help "hundreds" of immigrant children.
Advocates were on hand yesterday to champion the proposal. Although it would likely affect only a small population of foster care children, even one child moving on without protected status is a tragedy, said Nancy Downing, the director of advocacy and the legal department at Covenant House, a youth shelter.
"Even if you're talking about 10 kids a year, that’s significant because those are 10 kids that are really going to be leading a life of poverty," said Downing. "They can't get jobs. They can't get education, if they cant get financial aid."
When a child is 18, he or she leaves the city's foster system. Once out of the system, the child would no longer be eligible for the status, said Quinn.
The council's proposal would only apply to undocumented children in the foster system. It does not affect children in the juvenile jail system.
It was one day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivered a particularly grim budget proposal, and the mayor and Gov. David Paterson were in the same room.
They came together to open a one-stop Haitian relief center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn -- a joint effort by the state and the city.
Standing beside the governor, Bloomberg thanked Paterson for all the work the state had done and lauded the relief the center would bring to Haitian-American New Yorkers.
The two shook hands. Then Bloomberg left.
Any casual observer might think the mayor and the governor were on good terms -- that the mayor hadn’t spent the better part of the previous day criticizing the governor's executive budget proposal released last month.
On Thursday at City Hall, Bloomberg warned New Yorkers that his gloomy preliminary budget proposal could get even gloomier thanks to Paterson's plan for the state -- a proposal Bloomberg argues would cut an additional $1.3 billion from the city's $63.6 billion budget. The state's budget office disputes the city's calculation.
"We've acted responsibility, but for a long time the state has spent money they don't have," said Bloomberg on Thursday. "And it's coming home to roost."
The Bloomberg administration -- for the first time ever -- printed an additional budget plan to try to prove its point. Titled "Contingency Plan for Proposed State Budget Reductions," the alternate proposal would eliminate all public litter baskets and street cleaning. The government would shed 19,000 jobs, including more than 3,100 police officers and more than 8,500 teachers, through layoffs and attrition.
The plan, to some city observers, is practically apocalyptic. But others question whether it's warranted.
For years, the city has contended it does not get its fair share of funding from the state -- sending far more there than it gets back in return. The cards, officials argue, are stacked against the five boroughs.
But in this hand of political poker, is Bloomberg bluffing?
Last week, Bloomberg released a $63.6 billion budget proposal -- a 7 percent increase from the $59.4 billion budget approved in June. Controllable spending, which does not include employee health care or pension costs, decreased by 1.8 percent, according to the administration.
The mayor took a hard line with labor, asking teachers to take a lower pay increase than anticipated next year -- 2 percent instead of 4. He said the city's other unions would receive pay increases in fiscal year 2011 -- which spans from July 2010 to June 2011 -- only if they increased their productivity or agreed to pension and health care savings.
The mayor's preliminary budget cuts $1.6 billion from agency spending, and it closes an approximately $4.9 billion deficit. The proposal does not include any across the board tax increases, though it does suggest including airline fuel in the city's sales tax.
But, Bloomberg warned, the city could be dealt an even worse hand.
If the state went forward with the governor's proposal, most of the mayor's original cuts -- tough to swallow for many as is -- could start to choke city services.
Add 42 additional fire companies to the 20 originally slated for closure. On top of the loss of 1,292 police officers (through attrition), would be layoffs of 3,150 officers -- bringing the city's police forces to the same level as 1985, according to the administration.
Teachers, forget salary disputes. If the governor's plan goes into effect, Bloomberg said about 8,500 classrooms would not have an instructor.
Under the mayor's original plan, elementary schools with less than 300 students would be without a school nurse. Under the doomsday scenario, a nurse would be absent in any city school with less than 500 students.
The Department of Sanitation would see a decrease of about $63 million in the next fiscal year under the mayor's preliminary plan. If Paterson's proposal is approved, the cut nearly doubles. Recycling would be reduced to every other week, most areas of the city would see cuts in trash pick up and you would have nowhere to throw out garbage when you're walking down the street.
City uniformed agencies, like police or sanitation, would be cut by almost another 4 percent under the Albany plan. Most other departments see cuts of about 7 percent.
In other words, the mayor's all in.
The elimination of the city's revenue sharing aid accounts for the largest cut from the state. While other counties across the state saw a 2 to 5 percent reduction, the city's entire $656 million allocation was eliminated, Bloomberg said. The state also slashed the city's education funding by $493 million. The education department's budget is about $23 billion in fiscal year 2011.
The governor's office contends Bloomberg has exaggerated the state budget's effect on the city. Because the city and state use two separate accounting systems, the city is counting its revenue sharing aid for two fiscal years, state officials said. State officials say the city is only being cut one year, or about $328 million. Overall, the state contends the city cut is only $748 million, not $1.3 billion.
Officials at the governor's budget office argue the city has more resources than other areas of the state. For instance, the city's revenue sharing aid is a small portion of the city's budget in comparison to other large cities across the state -- Yonkers, Syracuse and Rochester rely far more on this type of funding, state officials say.
In the eyes of Albany, the city can live without it.
"We believe that the local fiscal impact figures that New York City is citing regarding Gov. Paterson's 2010-11 Executive Budget are inflated through the use of selective accounting," said Robert Megna, the state budget director, in a statement last week. "The Division of the Budget has produced a balanced and comprehensive analysis of the true impact of the executive budget on New York City and all other municipalities."
Since the beginning of 2007, according to the Bloomberg administration, the city has made seven rounds of agency cuts.
At some point, city officials say, decreases go beyond getting rid of the extra box of paper clips. They start to hurt.
"We keep getting closer and closer to the bone," said Bloomberg last week.
Gone are the savings from restructuring or adjusting overtime costs. In the mayor's doomsday budget the cuts would not only hurt, but be politically sensitive.
The mayor's office did not take aim at outside contractors. He said it would be police officers and teachers who would lose their jobs.
And some say, he did that for a reason.
"Is some of it theater? Probably," said Doug Turetsky of the Independent Budget Office. "You pick some of the most dramatic alternatives, so you're showing people this is going to happen. So they put pressure on their state legislators."
Even if the state went ahead with all the cuts, officials from Albany and New York City said they wouldn't expect the mayor to make the dramatic, sure to be unpopular slashes he outlined.
But if Bloomberg successfully lobbies the state, the city shouldn't expect to be held harmless from Albany either. This year there is no federal stimulus, said Carol Kellermann of the Citizens Budget Commission. Everyone will have to make sacrifices.
"I don't think the cuts will be as high as they are, but I'm sure the mayor thinks he really needs to sound the alarm to make sure they are lower," said Kellermann. "I don’t see how they can restore everything to New York City. There have to be some cuts."
Some advocates say their areas, particularly social services, have already been cut too much. And under the contingency plan these programs lose even more funding. Housing for those with HIV and AIDS would be cut by 11 percent, 500 soup kitchens would lose funding and 1,750 seniors would no longer have meals delivered to their homes.
"The cuts proposed in the mayor's preliminary budget are bad enough. If New York City doesn't receive its fair share of state aid, our human services sector -- especially child care, youth programs, and senior services -- will be decimated," said Susan Stamler, the director of policy and advocacy at the United Neighborhood Houses. "If the contingency plan goes through, it will present a nightmare scenario for New York City -- especially for human services and the communities they serve. New York City should not be unfairly excluded from state aid that every other municipality in New York receives."
The mayor has one ace up his sleeve: The legislature's New York City delegation.
"He certainly has an ally in me," said Sen. Carl Kruger, the chairman of the State Senate Finance Committee. "Does he have an ally in the State Senate? We have to temper the needs of the city with the needs across the state."
Giving the mayor another couple of good cards is the fact that it's election season. Every state legislator in the city is up for re-election this fall. If cuts run deep, the budget will likely be on voters' minds when they head to the polls.
Nonetheless, some state legislators are approaching both the city and state budget issue cautiously.
Austin Shafran, a spokesperson for the State Senate Democratic majority, said the Democrats endorse the mayor's priorities.
"We agree with the mayor that we have to do everything possible to adequately fund vital service areas, such as education, health care and public safety and maintain our commitment to creating jobs," said Shafran.
But Shafran declined to say outright that they would fight to reverse the city's cut.
On the Assembly side, a spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said only that his office was reviewing every budget -- both city and state. Other Assembly members are ready to fight for New York City, but they also realize both the city and state are in uncertain times.
"We are in unusual economic times. The state has a very serious shortfall in revenues, and we are have very, very difficult decisions to make," said Assemblymember N. Nick Perry of Brooklyn last week. "As a legislator from New York, I certainly am going to do everything I can to make sure to the greatest extent that we can we restore the proposed cuts that hurt New York City."
City and state officials agree that by the time it's enacted neither proposal will look as it does now. The state budget will have to be approved by April. After, the mayor will release his final budget proposal. He will then have to contend with the City Council's priorities.
All of that will mean the cards still have some shuffling to do.