Joe Landon

Joe Landon

The new Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) recognizes the critical role parents play in the instruction of their children – and embeds information technology into constabulary by requiring parents' input into local school commune budgets and accountability plans.

We are excited about the opportunities for parents, educators and school board members to talk more oftentimes with each other, listen to each other, and work more than collaboratively to assistance all students succeed.

Parents understand how their children learn and what motivates them to succeed. Through the new funding formula, parents now have a true opportunity to articulate what matters to them to their local school boards, too every bit to inform the school districts' goals for all students, and the programs and services they'd like to see to help achieve them.

And what matters to parents? For one thing, parents overwhelmingly back up exposure to the arts throughout the curriculum because they witness firsthand the impact of the arts in the lives of their children, reaching hidden talents and building conviction. They recognize the way the arts connect people more than securely to the globe and open them to new ways of seeing.

Colleen-You-180x214

Colleen A.R. You

We believe the arts are essential for a creative, engaged, work-prepared and civic-minded student population. The arts are a critical link to learning success.

That sentiment of parents is echoed by concern leaders who sympathise the needs of the workforce. Joseph Calahan, Vice President of Xerox Corporation, observed: "Arts education aids students in skills needed in the workplace: flexibility, the power to solve problems and communicate, the ability to larn new skills, to exist creative and innovative, and to strive for excellence."

In the coming months, as school boards seek input and develop their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), parents volition be raising questions: What is a quality arts plan and practice our students have admission to it? Are the arts included in professional development for Common Core State Standards? How can the commune use its additional LCFF money to provide access to arts education for low-income students, English Linguistic communication Learners and foster youth?

Districts will have much to accomplish and accost in their LCAPs across the 8 identified country priority areas, but we know the arts tin and should cistron into most of those areas.

There is bear witness throughout the state that districts are already responding to the voice of parents.Earlier this yr, MichaelHanson, superintendent of Fresno Unified School District, wrote, "The arts are essential to a well-rounded teaching for our students, expanding their thinking and experiences in ways that simply cannot be achieved by any other avenue." The school board responded by allotting an additional $1 meg investment in the arts, which has yielded more than 1,000 new musical instruments, new equipment for visual and performing arts, also equally new arts teaching positions and professional person development in schools throughout the district.

We are entering a new era in education with greater parent appointment and more local controlling authorisation. It'southward an opportunity for parents to communicate what matters to them and their children – including access to the arts – and an opportunity for local school board officials to receive that input and to integrate its perspective into the specifics of their local plans. When parents have more than of a say, that's proficient news for the hereafter of the arts in our schools.

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Joe Landon is executive managing director of California Alliance for Arts Education and Colleen A.R. You lot is president of the California Land PTA.

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