Heart of Art—State of Arts Education, Fall 2025

This article originally published on September 19, 2025 in the Ledger Dispatch Newspaper. Click here to view the article on their website or read below.

By Meghan Joy “Mojo” O’Keefe

From 2010 through May 2025, Amador County Arts Council (Amador Arts) was at the forefront of standards-based, equitable arts education in the county’s six public elementary schools. Arts Education in all five disciplines is required for all students in all grades, TK through 12. Amador Arts volunteered to provide free arts classes since the district had no funds for arts education.

Working in partnership with the Principals, classroom teachers, Amador County Unified School District, and the Amador County Office of Education, the Arts Education Program from Amador Arts was founded in 2010 in collaboration with Bruce Peccianti (may he rest in peace). It was launched with $100 in one classroom. Over the years, the program grew to serve 100% of the TK (transitional-kindergarten) through 6th-grade classrooms at all six public elementary schools in Amador County.

100% of the public elementary classrooms participated in the program and the associated annual Student Arts Showcase, which exhibited student work from these classes. The classes were standards-based and provided rigorous, sequential education in the arts for more than 20,000 students over the last 15 years. Between 2016 and 2025, Amador Arts contributed more than $168,000 to arts instruction in the public elementary schools alone.

As the 2025-2026 school year gets into full swing, the tides have changed for arts education, and the transformation is nothing short of remarkable: more arts education for all local youth!

Not long ago, in 2022, the people of California voted to pass Proposition 28, the Arts and Music in the Schools Act, which provides annual funding for arts education in all California schools.

Thanks to unprecedented allocations toward arts education, Prop 28 funds have permanently changed Amador County classrooms, leaving the responsibility of equitable arts education in the hands of the school district and school sites.

This is excellent news because the schools have not had money designated for arts education for decades. You read that correctly: decades. In fact, the 1970 Ryan Act shifted teacher training programs away from the arts. Then, in 1978, Proposition 13 capped property taxes, and the per student funding in California went from 4th to 47th in the nation. This resulted in cuts at public schools, primarily impacting arts, dance, music, and field trips.

Since then, it has been a long game, uphill, and in the snow (so to speak) as advocates across the state work toward funding for arts education. Today, thanks to the voters passing Prop 28, we finally have funding for arts education, and it is only just beginning to impact our unique rural community.

The state’s leading arts education advocacy organization, Create CA, explains, “Prop 28 brings a historic opportunity for schools and districts to invest in arts education to help all students succeed in school and life and reach their career goals.” The audited funding is strictly earmarked for arts education and supplies. 80% has to go to instruction, while the other 20% can be used for supplies and arts experiences. Moreover, the funds can only be used for new arts education; they cannot supplant existing arts education already funded by the district before Prop 28 implementation.

You can check out the public Prop 28 funding allocations provided by the California Department of Education website. “Proposition 28: Arts and Music in Schools – School Site Calculation (XLSX)“ is a detailed spreadsheet that includes the funding formula and the final amounts each site will receive this fiscal year. A new spreadsheet is made available to the public each year. To save you the trouble, I created the accompanying infographic to conveniently show the amount of Prop 28 funds each Amador site receives for fiscal year 2025-2026. The best part is that these Prop 28 funds far outweigh the meager program Amador Arts had been providing.

Although the elementary arts classes from Amador Arts are no longer needed, thanks to a $5,000 grant from the California Arts Council, Amador Arts continues to administer the Poetry Out Loud competition for all high school students. Additionally, thanks to a $1,500 grant from Create CA, Amador Arts continues to bring free Arts Advocacy and Career Development resources to high school arts classes.

However, our most valuable service is our sustained commitment to offering free consultations to any educational site. Attending countless Prop 28 planning meetings between 2022 and 2025, and providing the district and school sites with a list of about a dozen local Teaching Artists in all five arts education disciplines, I serve as a free resource for the local school sites, district administrators, and county offices. Anyone can contact me at Amador Arts for support in arts education planning and advocacy. Do not hesitate to reach out to Amador Arts at 209-256-8166 or info@amadorarts.org.

Contents taken directly from the publicly available spreadsheet “(Proposition 28: Arts and Music in Schools – School Site Calculation (XLSX)” provided by the California Department of Education.