Understandably, much of the focus in the arts world is on the “arts” section of the stimulus bill, including the $50 million item for the National Endowment for the Arts.
However, there’s an whole other side to this, to be found in the education portion of the package, which I am afraid for the moment doesn’t look very good.
The bad
news is this: the Senate version of the “compromise” bill to be voted
this week by the Congress slashes $40 billion, or 23% from
the funding designed to help states avoid drastic education cuts and teacher
layoffs , and eliminates the flexibility which would allow NYC to
use these funds to offset state or city budget cuts.
In New York City, as an example, this means that more
than half of all NYC public schools could face reductions of up to 16% next
year. Cuts of this magnitude will not only force teacher layoffs, but the funding for services of cultural organziations would be devastated, including teaching artist residencies, field trips, professional development, etc.
It’s also important to consider, again using New York City as an example, that approximately 30% of the public schools have no certified arts teachers whatsoever, and are therefore more dependent upon cultural organizations for arts education instruction than schools with arts teachers.
The “compromise” bill also completely eliminates the $19.5
billion program for school construction.
As for “riots in the streets,” (see previous post), it’s clearly hard to imagine people rioting over a change to mayoral control. These prospective cuts however, do make you wonder how 10,000 teachers being laid off in New York City will be received.
More to follow…