Thursday, February 02, 2012

LAUSD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS COULD SOON OFFER 100% LESS ARTS EDUCATION

By Lindsay William-Ross in  LAist |  http://bit.ly/zeaPUp

kids-paint-hands-art.jpg
Photo by Valeriy Lebedev via Shutterstock

February 2, 2012 10:30 AM  ::  For many children, a chance to do some artwork, make some music, or get up on a stage is the highlight of their school day, and a opportunity to learn lessons in a creative way. But the Los Angeles Unified School District is looking to take that away from their elementary school students, with a proposal of "total elimination of its elementary school arts education program," according to Arts for LA, an L.A. County arts advocacy group.

The LAUSD even prides itself on "nationally recognized Elementary Arts Program," and appears to understand the value that kind of instruction has for their 700,000 elementary-aged students, as explained on the LAUSD site:

Elementary Arts Teachers provide direct instruction to students and strategically support classroom teachers in growing their capacity to teach foundational skills in all arts disciplines. This cultivates integration of arts strategies across the curriculum that fundamentally improve student achievement in literacy and numeracy.

In response to the propose elimination of the Elementary Arts program, Arts for LA is calling for public action: "Arts for LA opposes this drastic measure and urges parents, students, arts advocates to take action by sending a letter to your school board member and sharing the alert with your networks." They suggest people share the action alert via Twitter and Facebook, to get the message out, and have prepared a how-to page on sending a letter to the LAUSD's Superintendent, John Deasy.  As of this morning, Arts for LA says over 100 letters have been sent in, but their goal is 1000 by Friday.

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