Proposition 28 funding, intended to supplement arts funding in schools, is being misused – Orange County Register

In a triumph of hope over experience, this editorial board approved Proposition 28, the School Arts and Music Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act, in 2022. We declared that the 6 million students in the state’s K-12 public schools, about 60 percent of whom are from low-income families, “deserve to benefit from an enriched education that would otherwise be available only to students whose parents can pay for private education in the arts.

Proposition 28 promised additional funding to every public school for art and music education and programs. The measure required the state to provide an additional amount equal to 1 percent of total Proposition 98 funding (typically about 40 percent of General Fund revenue) that elementary and secondary schools received the previous year. For the 2023-2024 school year, Proposition 28 funding was $938 million.

In January, this editorial board met with LAUSD school board member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin and asked if there had been any success stories in the nation’s second-largest school district following Proposition 28, which called for nearly $1 billion statewide for arts and music education.

She couldn’t name a single one. Ortiz-Franklin said there was a “crowding” of funding, although no one really wanted to call it “crowding.”

But now Proposition 28 proponent Austin Beutner is calling it exactly that. In a March 25 letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and legislative leaders, Beutner wrote that “some California school districts are deliberately violating the law by using the new funds provided by Proposition 28 to replace existing spending on arts education in schools.

Instead of “recruiting approximately 15,000 additional teachers and aides,” Beutner writes, “the funds would instead be used to finance existing programs.” That means millions of children won’t get the arts education voters promised.

Proposition 28 required local education agencies to certify annually that funds are used “to increase funding for arts education and not to supplant existing funding for these programs.”

Beutner’s letter asked state leaders to direct school districts to submit to the California Department of Education, within 30 days, a certification that Proposition 28 funds have not been used to supplant existing expenses, as well as a list of additional arts and music teachers employed in the current school year compared to the previous year.

The letter was also signed by officials from the powerful unions representing teachers as well as a local chapter of the Teamsters.

We’ll see how it goes.