On April 6, as part of a wide-ranging staff restructuring, Portland
Public Schools (PPS) announced that it was cutting its one and only
district-level position dedicated to the arts.
The post was that of K-12 arts curriculum specialist—AKA the
Arts TOSA (Teacher on Special Assignment)—whose responsibilities
included coordinating professional development for arts teachers,
developing a coherent district-wide arts curriculum, serving as a
liaison to community organizations and artists that support school arts
programs, and otherwise assisting classroom teachers of the visual and
performing arts—including music.
To be fair, PPS eliminated fully half of the 22 curriculum and
instruction TOSA positions it currently maintains in various content
areas, but come next school year when the changes take effect, the arts
will be the only discipline left without any district staff exclusively
dedicated to it, its administrative cadre dropping in quantity from the
loneliest number to no number at all. It is difficult to see this as a
positive development.
PPS spokesperson Matt Shelby, under advisement from the district’s
directors of curriculum, addressed my questions about the elimination
of an Arts TOSA by explaining that the new plan, “maintains curriculum
specialists in the subjects that have implemented a common district
curriculum. We are not currently implementing a common arts
curriculum.”
However, Shelby then went on to note that for the last five years
the Arts TOSA had been developing a common district arts curriculum,
ready for implementation at the end of this school year. Having spent
time and money on developing an arts curriculum, wouldn’t it make sense
to have arts education experts on staff capable of stewarding its
adoption and execution?
Many PPS teachers certainly think so. Take, for example, Grant High
School Director of Vocal Music Kathryn Wagner-West: “Having a district
arts curriculum adoption is impossible without a leader. Coordinating
community outreach programs with our schools is impossible without a
contact point. Trying to give equal access to arts programs to all
district students K-12 is impossible without a person who can travel
between schools to help share resources (isn’t that fiscally
responsible?).”
Portland’s deep reserves of talented and community-minded musicians
and artists are its greatest, and most under-utilized, educational
resource. In my experience, Portland’s musicians are not only willing,
but eager, to give their expertise and time as volunteers to augment
local public schools’ music programs—the very programs where some
of them first learned to play an instrument. But navigating the
district’s Byzantine bureaucracy can be challenging for an insider, let
alone an outside arts specialist. To make it happen, they need an
administrative liaison dedicated to the arts.
I have personally had the pleasure of helping to bring several
community-driven music-related programs to PPS in recent years, and in
each case the Arts TOSA was the key to making it happen. Without this
position, I wonder who will steward the money the student-run Music in
the Schools organization will raise at their annual benefit concert in
June, which in years past has leveraged local bands like Menomena, the
Thermals, and YACHT to raise thousands of dollars for PPS music
programs?
Who will see through to implementation the advanced visual art
portfolio class that prominent album art designers Carson Ellis and
Dana Dart-McLean have been planning to volunteer to teach next
year?
What will become of White Bird’s education outreach program that
brought top-tier dancers to 55 PPS classrooms?
Particularly when the economy is in the gutter and school districts
are bound to face even more austere budgets, making use of the skills
and services of the local arts community—often provided for free
or funded by outside grants—is more important than ever. With the
dissolution of the Arts TOSA position, Portland’s arts community is
losing its most accessible point of entry into the educational system,
and I fear its students are consequently losing a great deal more.