‘Overwhelming’ report outlines strategies to add more arts programs to Burbank schools
Burbank High School’s Noa Drake, center, sings and dances along with the rest of the members of the school’s show choir during practice at the school on September 22, 2015.
In 2002, Larry Applebaum, president of the Burbank Unified School Board, was a local resident and young father who would someday send his daughter to the same Burbank schools he had attended years prior.
However, after the turn of the millennium, local schools didn’t offer the robust arts programs that Applebaum and his peers had enjoyed decades earlier.
When he ran to be elected to the Burbank school board — first in 2003 and again in 2005 when he won — he advocated for more arts and music programs.
Now, slightly more than a decade later, Burbank’s visual, music, theater arts and dance programs are only partially realized, Applebaum said during a school board meeting earlier this month.
So, a new strategic arts plan has been created in an effort to get the district on track for more arts-related classes and programs.
Arts should not be an add-on that we’re doing fundraisers for. That should be the core of what we’re doing within our instructional programs.
— Burbank Unified Supt. Matt Hill
“We need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to put our efforts and intensity where our mouth is,” Applebaum said.
The plan was drafted by Peggy Flynn, arts and career technical education coordinator, and Daniel Swartz, a visual and performing arts teacher on special assignment.
The plan picks up from an earlier one and aims to list goals for how the district can invest in arts education over the next several years.
“The goal is to really identify the needs and the gaps and try to support our teachers and students as much as possible,” Swartz said.
Part of the plan involves having one teacher dedicated to each of the 11 elementary schools to teach music. Currently, five teachers divide their time between the 11 schools. Prior to 2012, only two teachers were serving all the schools, Flynn said.
Another goal would be to have full orchestras at every school in the district and purchasing the instruments that would make it possible.
Other objectives include hiring a manager to oversee the auditoriums at Burbank and John Burroughs high schools, offering a theater elective at David Starr Jordan and Luther Burbank middle schools and training more than 400 teachers in arts education.
Flynn said that before she and others spent several months listing priorities and costs, they were told to create a strong visionary plan and to “think bigger” by Supt. Matt Hill.
“I wanted a visionary plan that we could stretch to,” Hill said. “Arts should not be an add-on that we’re doing fundraisers for. That should be the core of what we’re doing within our instructional programs. Now that we have a visionary plan, I feel like we can march there.”
School board member Steve Ferguson asked for priorities, with costs attached to them, to be outlined for the next three years, in part, because the current plan, which lists goals through 2022, is “overwhelming.”
Ferguson likened reading the current document to “drinking out of a fire hose.”
Also, a three-year plan, he said, may hold more sway with donors and voters who could be willing to either approve taxes to support the arts or take part in fundraising initiatives.
“I think this community will double down if we can illustrate for them what we’re doing,”Ferguson said.
Applebaum suggested the board be given priorities that represent the next step they should consider when it comes to making funding decisions.
The board ultimately approved the plan, which is effective through 2022, with a 5-0 vote. School officials were also directed to create a more immediate, three-year plan.
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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com
Twitter: @kellymcorrigan
