Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Art education funding and teacher distribution in NYC schools
3:26:53
ยท
5 min
Council Member Rita Joseph discusses art education funding and the distribution of certified art teachers across NYC schools with Paul Jonathan Thompson from the DOE's Arts Office. The conversation covers the current state of art education and recent funding initiatives.
- 290 out of 1585 schools lack a certified art teacher, with 176 of those being elementary schools
- New York State does not require certified art teachers for K-6 grades
- Recent funding increases include $4.7 million for individual teacher studio arts allocations and $6.6 million for the Principal Fellows Program
- New initiatives include expanding the Childhood Springs Program and providing citywide Adobe licenses
Rita Joseph
3:26:53
I'm gonna be flagging a school for you.
3:26:56
One of my one of my favorite topics, art education.
3:27:00
The city supplemented the funding for art education with stimulus dollars and then covered them with city funding in 2025.
3:27:06
Even with these additional fundings, not all schools have arts instruction.
3:27:11
Maintaining and baselining this funding is a goal for the council.
3:27:15
How many schools currently lack a certified art teacher?
Paul Jonathan Thompson
3:27:22
Good morning, Chair Joseph.
3:27:23
Good afternoon.
3:27:24
Sorry, good afternoon.
3:27:27
We've been here a little while.
3:27:28
Yes.
3:27:28
Good afternoon.
3:27:30
Chair Joseph and council members, thank you, thank you, thank you for the question, and also thank you for the dedication and advocacy that you regularly have for the arts, especially in the support of the City Council Support for Arts Instructional grant.
3:27:46
So thank you very much.
3:27:49
As reported in the 02/2023, '20 '4 Arts in Schools report, of the fifteen eighty five schools, two ninety did not have a certified arts teacher.
3:28:03
Of the two ninety, one hundred and 70 six were elementary schools K through six.
3:28:09
And so one of the things to understand about the complexity of this is that New York State does not require there be a certified arts teacher in classrooms k through six, only six through 12.
3:28:23
So while there may not be a certified arts teacher teaching class in an elementary school, the report also reported that ninety nine percent of all students received instruction in at least one arts program.
Rita Joseph
3:28:40
I gotta be talking to my state colleagues.
3:28:42
Think council Senator Liu is gonna be here later.
3:28:46
I'm gonna take that up
Paul Jonathan Thompson
3:28:47
with I'm here for it.
3:28:48
Let's get him.
Rita Joseph
3:28:49
So am I.
Anderson
3:28:50
Let's get him.
Melissa Aviles-Ramos
3:28:51
We're just gonna ask you to make sure that you talk about it as a funded mandate with him too.
Rita Joseph
3:28:55
Funded mandate, correct.
3:28:57
You're gonna yell at the state too.
3:28:58
He's just visiting me now I don't want to scare him.
3:29:03
Per student allocation in this year's school in the Sam's increased our funding to cover over 5,000,000.
3:29:10
How does school spend this funding and what's the additional programs or services did this funding provide for?
Paul Jonathan Thompson
3:29:18
So in this SAM well, in this initiative for spring two thousand arts funding, what we did is 6,000,000 was at, well, about 6,000,000 was added to the FY '25 SAM number 36.
3:29:38
Four point seven million went to increasing the individual teacher studio arts allocation from a little over 600 to $2,000 So every arts teacher certified in New York City received that funding.
3:29:53
It just went into schools' budgets.
3:29:56
We also increased the partnership grants by 1,300,000.0.
3:30:02
We also funded 6,600,000.0 to go into the Principal Fellows Program, and that is funding 170 principals schools.
3:30:15
These are principals who are part of the Arts Office Principal Fellow Program.
3:30:19
We're gonna be outfitting them with three classrooms with new paint and furniture specifically for the arts.
3:30:25
And these are principals that we have worked very closely with to ensure that the arts are at the core of their school's instructional mission.
3:30:35
2,500,000.0 will go to extending the Adobe licenses citywide.
3:30:44
And we have a hundred and 35,000 that is going to a new arts office initiative which is the Childhood Springs Program Expansion.
3:30:54
And so we piloted a program this year in three schools, one in The Bronx, 1 up in Harlem, and one out in Staten Island where we outfitted three k and pre k programs with little baby violins, and then we helped to support and work with art partners in ensuring that those students had at least four days a week of string instruction in class at a very critical age, where getting students up and running on these string instruments is very important if they want to be competitive at all in terms of audition programs or even programs outside of New York City public schools, like the Juilliard program, various programs that are sought after in the city.
Rita Joseph
3:31:46
We want well rounded students, and again, those are well kept secrets.
3:31:53
Yes.
3:31:53
Deputy chancellor, we talked about that.
3:31:57
How many schools rely on this 41,000,000 to provide arts education?
Melissa Aviles-Ramos
3:32:11
Cher, are you talking about the SAM, the school allocation?
Rita Joseph
3:32:14
Yeah, the $41,000,000 How
UNKNOWN
3:32:16
many
Rita Joseph
3:32:15
Before
Melissa Aviles-Ramos
3:32:17
we give you the specifics, I just want to highlight that that money is to support programmatic pieces and not headcount.
3:32:23
And so what this administration has done is recognizing complexity behind arts programming, we have centralized through Paul's work a number of supports on the programmatic side.
3:32:34
So even schools that don't necessarily have the ability to put in place an actual arts teacher, students are still getting access to arts programming.
3:32:44
But we will get you more specifics.
Rita Joseph
3:32:46
Okay, thank you.