Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Collaboration with superintendents and school visits for arts education
1:03:45
ยท
104 sec
Paul Thompson from the NYC Department of Education explains how they work with superintendents and conduct school visits to support arts education. He emphasizes the importance of partnering with superintendents to provide them with the necessary information to support principals.
- Creation of district-specific pullouts in the arts report for superintendents
- Regular meetings with superintendents to help them understand the data
- Introduction of borough arts directors who work primarily with principals
- School visits conducted by borough arts directors to support arts education initiatives
Paul Thompson
1:03:45
Well again, I think it's important that the nuance of this is that accountability for principals falls under the superintendent.
1:03:52
And so one of the things that we've tried to highlight again to wrap our office around the ways in which the system actually works is to ensure we're partnering with superintendents so that they get the information that they need to help support and if necessary hold principals accountable to the work that they're doing.
1:04:10
So one of the ways we've done that again, we're going to keep coming back to the ways that we've tried to reimagine the office.
1:04:17
We've created in the arts report a new literally, it's a pullout.
1:04:23
We thought we were making the report shorter.
1:04:26
We actually like doubled the size of it because what we did was create a pullout for each superintendent, each district so that they have a raw snapshot of what the data is for the schools in their district.
1:04:39
And primarily through that mechanism, we visit with superintendents throughout the year to help them calibrate understanding what the data is saying and then absolutely members of the arts office visit schools.
1:04:51
We have a band of members in our office that are borough arts directors.
1:04:56
There are seven of them.
1:04:58
There are one in each borough, but there's two in Queens and two in Brooklyn just given the size.
1:05:05
And the thing that's important about the borough arts directors to understand in our reorganization is that since we've come on board, we've designated that borough arts directors work with principals.
1:05:19
Their primary responsibility is to work with principals.
1:05:22
And so they are going out and working with schools regularly around calibrating around this type of work.