In Tuesday’s (10/27) Boston Globe, James Vaznis writes, “Boston public schools will announce today a major step toward offering arts instruction to all elementary and middle school students, even as the district must tighten its budget. The district will be receiving a $750,000 grant from the Wallace Foundation, a New York charitable organization that supports expansion of arts and music programs in urban districts nationwide. The grant will help the district develop a strategy for rolling out more arts programs, and it could lead to a larger donation to implement more programs. The announcement follows a report earlier this year that found that about a quarter of the city’s elementary schools and more than half of its middle schools did not meet a district standard of providing arts or music instruction at least once a week. … The district has set a goal of having all elementary and middle school students receive weekly arts instruction by 2012. Helping to fund that goal is a $2.5 million fund-raising campaign launched earlier this year by EdVestors, a Boston-based group devoted to school improvement, which is working with other nonprofits. So far, $1.1 million has been raised.”
Posted October 27, 2009
