School Days: Morgan Hill Unified School District
Arts Education : Passion Supported by Resources
By Lanae Bays, Public Information Officer, Morgan Hill Unified School District
M
organ Hill Unified School District elementary
and middle schools won a $1,000,000 Visual
and Performing Arts (VAPA) Grant from the US
Department of Education; and our administrators,
educators and students couldn’t be more excited.
Although Education Code states that course study for all
students should include visual and performing arts, the arts
became an extra rather than an appreciated and essential
component of education between the years 2000 and 2015.
Many schools throughout the state depleted such programs
in recent decades due to lack of funds and overemphasis on
testing. According to Create CA, a statewide arts education
coalition, only 12 percent of schools currently provide the arts
instruction mandated by the state.
MHUSD is at the forefront of a shift to value and focus
on equity and expansion of arts education. The district’s
administrators have been consistent advocates for this. In
2016, MHUSD adopted an Arts Equity Resolution, which
dedicated money specifically for VAPA in the local control and
accountability plan (LCAP), and established a VAPA committee
of teachers and administrators. In 2017, work began on a
district-wide Strategic Arts Education Plan. Research for that
plan exposed the variety of ways schools included the arts in
their day and who was accessing those opportunities. When
the VAPA Grant was announced, it was the perfect opportunity
to continue the momentum the district had been building in
arts education.
According to MHUSD Superintendent, Steve Betando, “The
impact of this grant will be to pump up a sustainable arts
program at the elementary level. This will further stimulate
arts-related student engagement, skills development and career
options as well as their value of and appreciation for the arts in
our world.”
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
Amanda Knudtzon Raudsep, Visual and
Performing Arts Teacher on Special Assignment,
wrote the grant application with Heather
Nursement, Director of Supplemental Programs.
Knudson-Raudsep is managing implementation
of the program, which requires expenditure of all
funds by September of 2019. The district’s grant
proposal was designed to allocate grant funds in
ways that will deliver sustainable benefits.
For example, visual art, theater, and music/
performing art supplies, tools and materials are
essential to VAPA programs and have a long
shelf-life of usefulness well beyond the grant’s
expiration. As another example, professional
development enables teachers to use their learned
arts skills year after year to benefit decades of students. In
addition, monthly trainings for T-K through 8th grade teachers
help develop instructional skills and strategies for integrating
the arts into other curriculum areas.
“This robust grant promises to build our capacity in the
arts within our own staff, while developing our educators to
have a greater influence in the visual and performing arts,”
Betando said.
The district’s highly-qualified VAPA teachers will lead
strategies on incorporating the fundamentals of the five arts
disciplines now recognized by the State (dance, media arts,
music, theater, and visual arts). Building teacher strategies will
increase opportunities for students to experience a variety of
methods for creating, performing and appreciating art.
Equitable access for all students is a principle of VAPA and
other MHUSD education programs. With more arts education
in the school day, all students will be able to create, perform
and respond to art in their lives, and to make connections to
how art is used in the community. Even the most disadvantaged
students will have more opportunities to explore a growth
mindset and collaborate with peers while gaining a background
knowledge of the arts—a reference to select a preferred art
discipline in high school, college, or in their careers.
“The creativity, curiosity and growth in our schools that this
grant cultivates through visual and performing arts education
is extremely beneficial,” Knudtzon-Raudsep said.
Developing an appreciation for the arts can bring a lifetime
of social and cultural expression, engagement and enjoyment
to every student. The VAPA grant is accelerating an arts move-
ment that’s alive and well in Morgan Hill Unified schools,
and the resources made possible by the grant are energizing
teachers, students, and families through art education in a
sustainable program.
june/july 2019
gmhtoday.com
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