Kimberly Olsen calls for arts education baseline, teacher pipeline, and data transparency

Good afternoon, Deputy Speaker Williams and members of the City Council staff.

My name is Kimberly Olson.

I'm here testifying on behalf of the New York City Arts and Education Roundtable regarding Strategy 5 and Create NYC provide a high quality arts education for all New York City students.

While Create NYC offers a strong framework, it's quite troubling to me to see that the last publicly recorded actions for Strategy 5 date back to 2022.

To your point earlier, Deputy Speaker, across the CREAT NYC materials, there lacks actually a shared baseline definition of what we actually mean when we say high-quality sequential arts education.

While there are buzzwords and terms thrown around like culturally responsive pedagogy, certified arts teachers, without actually a cleared shared definition, it's near impossible for us to measure what real progress has taken place.

What we do know is that arts education relies on a strong partnership.

Last year, last school year alone, over 900 cultural organizations partnered with New York City Public Schools, serving 84% of schools.

Partnership here is key, but as I think you can see, that partnership needs work between DCLA and New York City Public Schools.

To build on this momentum, we urge the city to focus on four critical actions.

First, close the certified arts teacher gap.

Currently, 69% of middle school or eighth grade students are failing to meet arts requirements set by the state, largely because their schools lack a certified arts teacher.

Applying the lessons learned from the 2020

2019 Staten Island pilot that helped bring more certified arts teachers into our system, leveraging the PE Works model, and also using the baseline funding for arts education can help our city close the gap and ensure that students receive a sequential arts instruction.

Second, help reconnect schools with local arts partners.

Since Create NYC launched, the city actually discontinued both the Arts and Cultural Education Services Guide and the annual Arts Services Fair, leaving schools without a clear roadmap to cultural partners.

We applaud you, Deputy Speaker, for hosting an upcoming CASA fair and urge the city to expand this model to at least one fair per district.

We are happy to help.

To help bridge this gap as well, the Roundtable is launching a platform called Creative Compass in late 26, early 27.

That's going to be a searchable arts partner database.

However, we need clear collaboration with New York City Public Schools, with DOE, and with the council to make it a success.

Third, we ask that you modernize CASA funding and contracting timelines.

The CASA programming is a model initiative, but grant amounts remain static since its inception, while the cost of living and the cost of delivering programs have skyrocketed.

With award letters being released as late as March, it leaves little time for program delivery that's only a fraction of the school year.

Moving to quarterly award letters and increasing grant sizes not only helps put teaching artists to work, but also helps deliver free programming to families starting earlier in the school year.

And last but not least, just improving data transparency.

In 2025, the independent budget...

reported that 72% of schools have at least one CDF-funded program.

Requiring grantees who are working in schools to include school DBN in their final reports will yield important data to help identify potential arts deserts and guide equitable funding allocations.

Thank you.