Ahead of Tuesday's meeting of the school board's curriculum committee, Los Angeles Unified administrators have released a new document detailing proposed arts access for its 270,000 elementary students next year.
The extensive spreadsheet is the most comprehensive view yet of arts instruction for the 2014-15 school year, the second school year under L.A Unified's new arts plan. The plan seeks to drastically ramp up arts access for students across the district and restore nearly $16 million in arts funding.
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Here are six key facts from the spreadsheet.
- Among the changes from last year: 31 schools will participate in a new pilot program that breaks each art form into a nine-week course, cutting the traditional instruction time, which was a full year long for some art subjects. Of the pilot schools, nine will also receive additional orchestra instruction. Three principals also purchased additional days of arts access.
- As KPCC previously reported, the district's 18 non-charter primary centers, which go from Pre-K to 2nd grade, will also only get one semester of arts access — a reduction for some of the schools. Seventeen of the primary centers will receive that semester as visual arts. One school, Amanecer Primary Center in East L.A., will receive dance instruction.
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School board district six, which covers North Hollywood, Pacoima and Van Nuys, has the largest percentage of elementary schools receiving orchestra access, 29 of its 73 schools, or 40 percent. By contrast, in school board district one in South Los Angeles — a seat up for election in August after the death of board member and arts champion Marguerite LaMotte — only 16 schools out of 66 are scheduled to get orchestra access, 24 percent.
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Of the 522 schools included in the report, 326 are scheduled to receive two days of arts instruction per week from the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and School Support; 168 will receive one day and 21 will receive half a day.
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About 30 elementary school principals purchased additional arts teacher time from school funds. The most common art form purchased by schools for the 2014-15 school year is vocal-music. The least common is theater.
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Seven schools are listed as receiving no arts instruction: Carlson Hospital Home School, City of Angels, Elementary Community Day School, Lowman Special Education Center, Lull Special Education Center, Perez Special Education Center and Willenberg Special Education Center. As their names suggest, these are mostly smaller, specialized schools.
The documents presented to the board defined the list as "arts services at all 522 elementary schools, primary centers and non-independent charts schools in LAUSD."
The documents have been posted online, (you can check here for access at your school) and are expected to be discussed during the school board committee meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
UPDATE: A school board committee discussed the new arts data Tuesday. To hear details of the meeting, click the audio in the "Listen Now" box on the upper left.