4Culture’s Arts Education Funding Program recently announced a $30,000 award to ArtsEd Washington.
The support builds upon a four-year partnership with the non-profit organization for their award-winning Principals’ Arts Leadership program (PAL).
This program helps principal-led elementary school teams create annual ongoing plans for arts education.
Local principals who’ve benefited from this program include Redmond Elementary principal Janice Heid, who is in her third year; Emily Dickinson Elementary principal Ellen Challenger, who is in her first year; and Rosa Parks Elementary principal Jeff Newport, who has graduated from the program. Rosa Parks was opened in 2006 as an arts-focused school and ArtsEd Washington was involved in the preliminary planning support of the school team.
ArtsEd Washington is uniquely positioned to provide this regional leadership training to support the Essential Academic Learning Requirements in the Arts put in place by the state’s Office of Public Instruction in 1993. As schools implement their arts plans, region-wide efforts are being catalyzed to create programs that integrate the arts throughout all areas of the school curriculum, and support the principals as instructional leaders in the arts.
Principals participating in the PAL program confirm that the integration of art into their curriculums is already making significant impacts on their schools – from elevated reading and math scores to better attendance records.
Charlie Rathbun, arts program manager with 4Culture, noted that “throughout its four year development, this program has been incredibly responsive to the needs of the principals themselves. It has been designed for, by, and about them. With new state-wide graduation requirements in the arts for all K-12 students on the horizon, the timing could not be better.”
Twenty King County schools representing six King County school districts participate in this program along with 18 more schools from Pierce and Kitsap counties.
The PAL program invites school principals, along with their staff, to participate in a three-year process of active training, planning and resource development to increase their capacity for integrating the arts across their school curriculums.
