Supporting the Arts with Love and Logic
Okay everyone, we have a problem.
It’s been a while since I last posted. Over a year to be exact. As many of you know, I’ve been busy!
Last year, I ran a campaign for the San Francisco Unified Board of Education (and WON!) On the campaign trail, I shared my vision of bringing more transparency and accountability to our district. Now that I’m a Board of Education Commissioner, and as Chair for the Budget and Business Services Committee, I have made it my utmost responsibility to ensure our school district’s budget is clear, accurate and equitable.
As a former classroom teacher, and as a current parent, it is crucial that every last dollar reaches our schools. As Commissioners, we are charged with ensuring the district is accountable — the public deserves to know how their taxpayer dollars are spent in service of our students.
We need to talk about the Arts budget.
In response to parent and community questions, I am creating transparency about our budget so families, teachers and community members understand how our district is funding arts programming.
Much of this is funded by SFUSD’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program.
Huge support for the Arts in our schools
Actually, San Francisco’s public schools are very, very lucky. Throughout the Great Recession and even now, our Public Education Enrichment Fund (PEEF) has allowed our district to provide arts and music programming that many other California districts cannot.
PEEF is voted for and funded by the residents of San Francisco. We are so fortunate to have these extra resources!
But I have questions
As part of my work for the Budget committee, I’ve been looking at the PEEF budget. Out of all our expenditures, Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) has one of the largest chunks of the PEEF budget — $15 million dollars.
As I look closely at the VAPA budget, I can see discrepancies in where the money is going. I’ve been asking about these for a while now, from the folks CONTINUE READING: Supporting the Arts with Love and Logic - SF PUBLIC SCHOOL MOM