The Arts Education Collective extends its congratulations to the Pasadena Unified and Lancaster school districts which join the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) in using their 2018 California Department of Education (CDE) Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SAEE) grants to fund Arts Education.
The SSAE grant program was created to support districts and charter schools across California in their efforts to providing all students with access to comprehensive, quality education. The grant program specifically prioritized applicants that aim to strengthen arts education, as well as those that will use funds to increase access to physical and mental health care.
The SSAE grant will be used to expand a program piloted at Eliot Arts Magnet, in which physical education teachers receive professional development and arts integration training from Lineage Dance Company teaching artists. It will also be used to complete the development of curriculum in the five art forms to align with core subject units and the California Common Core State Standards, NGSS, and History/Social Science standards. Lineage Dance Company will expand their partnership with the district by providing a dance residency in the district's secondary schools and managing dance training, while the Music Center and other contracted partners will assume teacher professional development training. Furthermore, the grant will fund the creation of well-equipped dance spaces, as few schools have facilities appropriate for such programming.
Lancaster School District will use their funding to implement arts integration classes which will be open to parent and teacher observation. These open classes will share ways that the arts transform learning in the classroom, by showcasing the district-wide arts learning currently in place, and creating community buy-in for further expansion of arts integration.
Finally, the LA County Office of Education’s $1.02M award from CDE’s SSAE Grant Program will support Scale Up! Student Success through Technology and Arts Integration Project to provide high-quality online/in-person professional development. Using a blended technology-driven instructional model, LACOE’s Center for Distance and Online Learning (CDOL) will help local educational agencies, schools and communities build knowledge and capacity to integrate arts strategies into Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS). In the summer of 2019, district leaders will come together to learn evidence-based integration strategies, and develop a collaborative implementation model that focuses on well-rounded education, academic achievement, and digital literacy for all students.
LACOE welcomes all interested Los Angeles County districts to apply to the Scale Up! Academy, taking place in June of 2019 in DTLA. Space is limited, so districts are encouraged to apply early.