Joint Committee on the Arts

Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the Joint Committee on the Arts joint Committee on the Arts Informational Hearing on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Education, also known as STEAM. Thank you for all being here, especially our panels.

I did it wrong. I'm going to start all over again. So we're talking about art, right? I went to a performance, it was a modern music piece in LA. Like about twelve years ago, and the piece that they were performing, I hated. And about 25 minutes into it, somebody broke one of the strings on their violin and they started over from the beginning again. And that's what I'm going to do now.

Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to the joint committee on the arts informational hearing on Science, Technology, Steam, Arts and Math Education, also known as Steam. Thank you all for being here, especially our panelists, some of whom drove for hours or even flew in to join us today. Mike Fong didn't. I saw him walk from across the street. So less of a thank you to you.

The goal for this hearing is to highlight the A in Steam. Traditionally, the arts and sciences have been thought of as entirely separate disciplines, but we know that's not true. Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics are all advanced through creativity and curiosity, and each discipline has something to learn from the others.

Today, we will examine how California's classrooms, from elementary schools to our universities, are offering arts education alongside scientifically oriented subjects and what we can do to ensure art is fully integrated into STEAM hearing curriculums, not just as an afterthought. I am glad to be here, along with our vice chair, Senator Allen, who is a huge advocate for the arts and arts education. Thank you to Senator Allen and his staff for working with my staff to organize this hearing.

We have a lineup of incredibly impressive panelists, ranging from leadership from the Department of Education, a student advocate, professors, deans, and a corporate partner. Our panelists will paint a comprehensive picture of our exciting programs happening throughout the state, challenges in implementing and expanding those programs, and opportunities for collaboration at all levels of government, nonprofits, and private sector. Our panelists will also help us visualize the pipeline from STEAM education to careers.

Before turning it over to our vice chair, I want to go over some rules for the hearing. Yeah, this is going to keep this crowd in line. We will have two panels, with each organization allotted ten minutes for their presentation. Please stay within your time limit. We have a sergeant here if you don't. After each organization presents, we will leave a few minutes for questions and answers. After our two panels conclude, we will provide opportunity for public comment for those who are here.

For the public comment portion, please note that each person will have two minutes for their remark. And also note that there's no vaccination bills on the agenda. All testimonies today will be in person, including public comments. Now I will hand it over to Senator Allen to say a few words.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Rendon. Appreciate it. I want to reiterate your lack of enthusiasm for Assembly Member Fong. Actually, no, but I'll say he's a lot better than all the rest of them. Because he's here. Because he's here. But I'm a big fan of yours, Mr. Fong, and I appreciate all the work you've done. You've been a great Member of this committee. In fact, when we did tours of the cultural districts around the state, you were one of the most consistent participants.

And I know you've been such a great champion for the arts and just appreciate your long standing commitment to this committee. Looking forward very much to working with our chair, our speaker emeritus. This is something that he specifically sought out, I think, a role that he wanted to take as he left the speakership because it's such a topic of interest and importance for him. I also want to just thank all the panelists for coming up, for taking their time up to be here.

Very special shout out to Ed and Jason Crockett, who came all the way up from LA. I appreciate you guys for making the trip up from down south. This has been an area of real interest for me for so long.

I've been involved with this committee Love the Arts for all education focus that we've had, cultural funding, advocating for our creative community, looking at artists as therapists in everything from a prison context, to helping veterans coming home from war, to artists as second responders after terrible disasters, and the type of really meaningful healing that they can bring to communities. So it's been such a privilege being a part of this committee for such a long period of time.

So this is our opportunity to just kind of writ large. This committee is all about making sure that there is a constant focus on the arts. We don't hear bills. We hear ideas, out of which many bills and proposals and policy changes come. Lots of really good things have come out of our hearings through the years.

Just to give you an example, we did a hearing on arts and education on Vapic appliance many years ago, out of which then we really started to focus on the fact that among many problems, we actually dropped the teaching credential for theater and dance teachers many years ago. Nobody quite knew why. They knew that CTA had always opposed making a change in the area, but we said, we got to reopen this issue.

And the arts teachers took to the floor of the CTA convention, went out and advocated for the Bill and convinced all their colleagues to change the organization's policy. And next thing you know, we've now reinstated the teaching credential for these really important arts subjects that were the only two topics that were in Edcode Delineated that didn't have a teaching credential associated. So that was really important.

Now people can actually get a credential in their own subject and not have to go the dance teachers had to go get a PE credential. Anyway, the point being this was something that came out of one of our hearings and we know that there's so many other examples. So I was on the school board myself and I was an education chair in the Senate before my current chairmanship. So education issues are immensely important to me as well.

I know what a difference a strong, steam classroom can make for kids. I've seen it both in the theory but also up close and personal in my own home school district, and I'm now seeing it in my own son's schooling. It's ultimately about creative collaboration and teamwork along with problem solving in a project focused learning environment, increasing engagement and curiosity about Stem companion subjects in addition to the arts. And it's all about making sure that kids stay engaged and in school.

And ultimately so many kids that don't interact with or relate to the traditional science curriculum, arts can connect with them in a different way and engage them in a different way and actually not only deepen their love and appreciation for the arts, but deepen their own sense of self within a school context and with science. Oftentimes we see science as such a kind of cold, hard subject and the arts being about the heart.

But there's so much interaction and we're going to be talking about it today. So looking forward to today's presentations and discussions and with that, love to see if our colleague Senator Fong has any comments.

Thank you so much, Chair Rendon and Senator Allen and to all the arts committee Members for the leadership and efforts here. Today's discussion to really look at the pipeline in higher education as well is something as a career catalyst in the higher education and career pipeline in the arts. And as a Senator, also served on the school board. I served on the Community College Board in Los Angeles.

And the work that was done there to promote the arts, we had the Vincent Price Art Museum on the campus of East LA College. And the work there that's happening to really make sure that we have embraced the arts and we have the arts as part of our K Twelve curriculum or higher education curriculum and just really through all throughout California. And the status of arts education is so critical for the growth of our students. And so I look forward to today's presentations and today's discussion. And thank you so much again for the invitation.

It's been a while. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. Assembly Member thank you all for joining us. Let's get started with our first panel. Our first panelist is Mary Nicely, chief deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education. Ms. Nicely, thanks for joining us. Good to see you again.

Thank you. Should I sit here?

Yeah, please.

Hello. Hello. Sound good? Thank you, Chair Rendon, Vice Chair Allen, and Member Fong for inviting me here and CDE here today for this really important conversation. Mary Nicely, Chief Deputy Superintendent here at the Department of Education representing State Superintendent Tony Thurman. And I was really excited to hear about this and the intersection of arts education and its connection to traditional Stem education.

As a former stage mom, who I thought my daughter, of course, was always better than everyone else's, and she is 35 now, but all of her videos are still up there, and I still post them every year for her birthday. Jessie, you were Annie when you were. In fourth grade. You were awesome. But my daughters were ,so I kind of miss being a stage mom, but now I can see these connections.

My daughters are programmers now, but on the side, chefs, food and art magazine editors, amateur farmers and knitters, crocheters crafters. And so I've seen the benefits of being able to have this arts education intertwined with being able to live at home with the mom and dad that are programmers. And you say, I never want to be a programmer.

It's like, yeah, you're going to be a programmer, but you're going to get to do this other stuff, too, and you're going to love it, and it's going to be really wonderful. And and so I always look at thinking about how throughout history, some of our greatest thinkers and our creators and our ventures were also amazing artists and scientists. And at some point in our education, that stopped being the thing. We started siloing off these subject areas when they used to be.

I know when I grew up intertwined, and at some point they were broken down into these silos where kids started getting tracked into what they might or might not be. So I see the A and STEAM bringing not only relevance to the why of these Stem fields, but the how, the critical thinking and the creativity that have to go into being successful. A successful engineer, a successful mathematician, a successful problem solver. So I'm really excited about that.

I will say that when I came to the Department of Education in 2019, after coming with the state superintendent, I was a little stunned to come to the Department and see that we didn't actually have a STEAM office or unit at all. It was a little shocking because we had chaired the Assembly Select Committee on STEAM, and we're doing a lot of work in that area, and I was very excited to be able to come and do that, and then it just wasn't there.

But we're really grateful to be on this panel because the CDE Foundation, thankfully, as partners, carried on the STEAM Symposium that has thousands of people who come every year to support from around the state and across the country and internationally. So it's a great partnership to have them there.

So I'm really happy to be here and also to know that the art standards were written by. Another one of. Our panelists who left pretty much maybe right around 2021 and has actually been successfully leading some of this. Arts from the field for us because we're kind of coming back into this world ourselves and really grateful that there have been investments by the Legislature for expanded learning, primarily in our career pathways, in our academies.

So we've been able to continue on that way. But as Chair Rendon mentioned, it's not an afterthought, but it isn't necessarily integrated into the classroom every day. And so we're really excited that prop 28 has passed and we may have dedicated up to a billion dollars a year to be able to really go back to the way I grew up many, many decades ago where it was just a given. You picked up your violin or your piano or whatever and you started doing that in elementary school and all of us had to do that.

I was never a great dancer, so we're not going to talk about that, but I did play the violin, so that was wonderful. So currently what we do have at the Department of Education are ourSTEAM hubs, which are part of our expanded learning program. And so we do have 16 STEAM hubs across the state and they've been very intentional to include the arts in all of their programming. So we're really happy that at least that has been able to continue on.

And they're doing a lot of visual arts, they have academy, they take out the kids for weeks at a time for camp outs and are really trying to integrate so much of the arts into the math and science fields while they're out there environmental education. So trying to track all of these together. We also have a number of steam academies that are funded through the state as well. But again, that's not every kid and equitably, only a certain number of kids can get into these academies.

Only a certain number of these kids can be served by these 16 hubs that are across the state. And once again, also on the curriculum side of things, we are really excited. That what vice chair Allen mentioned, that 50 years, after almost 50 years, the credentials in dance and theater have been reinstated. So those are good things. I think we're heading in a great direction to be able to uplift the work and bring arts back into our mainstream.

Also we also know that the CDE foundation is working on the residencies because we do know that there's going to be a massive shortage in teachers in this area and some credentialing challenges because most of our credentialing in the arts is in the upper grades and we do not have standards actually for the lower grades.

And so the credentialing is going to be a huge challenge for us moving forward and how to remove those barriers to bring in artists and just high quality teaching professionals into that area. So I'm going to hand it over to my partners here on the panel and I'm just excited to have Penelope who's also here and is one of our student advisors on our student advisory council. So I've just met her for the first time. So really excited to have some great partnerships to help us as we move into the arts world. Kind of back into that world at the Department of Education.

Great. Thank you. Before you do if you don't mind, we have Assembly Member Boerner here from San Diego County and thank you for the oreos.

Sure. I really appreciate our Speaker Emeratus and Chair of Joint Arts and Vice Chair of Joint Arts for Convening. This hearing. I think it's so important what arts education can do. I've seen it in my own kids. I got my start in politics as a PTA mom. So I really appreciate all the work you're doing and look forward to hearing more about what we could do as the Legislature to support the arts in California. Thank you.

Thank you. Should we continue? Do you have any questions for Ms. Nicely? I was a little curious about the sort of distinction between the hubs and the academies and sort of where they are geographically and the differences between the two and where they may.

There's the academies are there's about four or five academies and then those are ones that are just particularly steam academies. They're mostly in Southern California to be honest with you. The 16 STEAM hubs are scattered across the country across the state of California and so they're throughout the counties. They're situated at the county offices but those are expanded learning. So those are like our after school programs. The academies themselves are full day actual schools. Public schools. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. I don't know whether it makes maybe more sense to open up to the panel but I am interested in some of the opportunities that might exist with the passage of Prop 28. But maybe be best for us to hear from everybody and then kind of have a broader conversation because let's do that. I know we didn't want to focus specifically on that here today but obviously it's a big elephant in the room. The implementation is really important and it provides us with real opportunities. But I think there are also some concerns about how the rollout is going.

Cool. Let's do that. If a Member has to leave before they have an opportunity to ask their questions and just poke me I was looking over here but otherwise I think that's a great idea. Great. Continue with the presentations.

So I'm Ed Honowitz. I'm the CEO of the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation or the CDE Foundation. And first of all really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to talk about STEAM, which is something that we are deeply involved with and want to certainly acknowledge our partnership with Superintendent Thurman, with Mary Nicely and the Department. The CDE Foundation is the fiscal manager of philanthropic funds that come to the Department of Education.

We also run a variety of programs internally, and you'll hear more about those momentarily. But we run the California Labor Management Initiative, working with school districts across the state to build partnerships between labor and management. We run the California Teacher Residency Lab, and my colleague, co Director of the lab, will speak to you here a little bit more in detail about that work, which is really exciting and important.

We also run the California supervisor@hellyervelodrome.com Symposium, which is the largest gathering of Stem Steam educators in the country, and that's put together in partnership with the Department of Education and the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. So we produced the steam symposium. It was originally the STEM Symposium, and we added the A, I don't know, five or six years ago, but it's been going on for eleven years.

It was really one of the first things that the foundation did in order to address a need that wasn't funded elsewhere, et cetera. So I want to start by just saying, please join us if you're able, or your staff, February 9 and 10th at the Long Beach Convention Center. And we will have I think you have some information in your packet there specific to the symposium and would love to do what we can to reach out to you around that program.

The theme of that symposium is you belong in STEAM, because we know that there's a lot of California students that don't feel like they belong in STEM or STEAM education. And so I want to kind of quickly address why STEAM? What's this idea of STEM plus arts equals STEAM? The acronym of STEAM was really kind of spearheaded by John Maeda, who was a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist.

He was faculty at MIT, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently the Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. So that kind of connection between art and technology is more than just on the surface. They're deep, deep connections, and I'll talk about that. Really appreciate this committee and the Members focusing on STEAM, as you're probably aware, not only in California, but there's also a bipartisan Congressional Steam Caucus with over 60 Members in Washington.

So what are some of the challenges around STEAM? Well, there's a lot of silos. I'm sure you've experienced this, being elected officials, and even surprisingly in education, there are silos in most high schools. The math Department isn't talking to the Science Department very often. I mean, there's all those kinds of things, but it's even harder when you start to add in the arts, right? So why add art to STEM, right?

And sometimes you hear folks in the traditional STEM fields, right, science, technology, engineering, and math talking about, like, why are we adding the arts? What does our work have to do with painting and marching band? But a way to make that easier, I think, for people to get that connection is to think of art as design. So I want to point you to a Art Center College of Design, the number one industrial design, product design, automotive design school in the US. Located here in California.

Also an almighty thank you. But I think it's important to understand that there's a deep, deep connection between technology, all of the STEM fields, and design and art. Is that a way of thinking about design? So let's talk for a second about design thinking. I guess look at it this way. Where would Apple, right, the largest company in the world, be without a huge focus on product design? I mean, people are fanatical about their Apple devices if they're an Apple user.

Steve Jobs said, design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. So we have an amazing opportunity with Prop 28, something that I think folks that have been in the arts are somehow trying to process, that this thing has actually happened after so many years of thinking in a scarcity mindset. And we really need to have a focus on connecting arts and STEM. So arts and STEM, it really makes STEM more accessible and relevant to students.

And I want to point out a couple of things in relation to that. If you look at PhDs that were awarded in the US. 47.9% went to white men, 25.7 went to white women, 2.2% went to black women. There's a big mismatch in terms of who our student population is versus those that are getting higher degrees. And we need to make STEM more accessible and culturally relevant. So there are ways to do that that are really exciting opportunities right now. Think about game design.

Think about esports. Esports, by the way, is now officially a CIF sport. So you can get a letter on your letter person's jacket, right for Esports, right for gaming. Great way to engage kids. And love to talk further with the committee staff about that at a certain point. But when you think about media design, video production, media, arts, I mean, currently arts and media are the most popular career tech ed pathways in California.

So it's a real opportunity to make that connection and make STEM more engaging and relevant. Just quickly. When you look at sort of the connection with jobs and skills and employment, whether you look at the World Economic Forum data or Mean, when you look at what employers want, top items, creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, analytical thinking, and innovation. I mean, that's the stuff of steam. It's what we need in the California economy to continue to be a leader in worldwide.

So I want to leave you with a couple of things before I turn it over to my colleague here. Saul Bass, who is probably one of the greatest graphic designers of the last hundred years, said, I think this in a really powerful way. Design is thinking made visual. And so we need to find ways to connect with our students, to connect industry and the arts, and to think about how design and technology are integrally related and incredibly important to the state of California.

So I hope you'll please join us at our STEAM symposium. I'd love to figure out how we feature a policy discussion on Arts and STEM. I think it's really important, and the thousands of educators coming would be well served to understand in a deeper way that connection. We don't have that connection as deep as we need it right now.

To that integration of the Arts and STEM, I want to say one of the big issues coming down the line is and Mary mentioned it around Prop 28 and the teacher shortage, which everybody's experiencing. So there's a real opportunity in there, and my colleague Jacquelyn Ollison is going to give you information specific to that in relation to one of our program areas, the California Teacher Residency Lab.

Thank you so much, Ed. And good afternoon, everyone. Jacquelyn Ollison, co-Director of the California Teacher Residency Lab at the CDE Foundation. I just want to say that I belong at STEAM. I was a math teacher, and I got my math degree. And when I was growing up, I didn't see a lot of African American female math teachers.

And so the ability to study that and to become a teacher and turn that around, it meant so much to me to have that representation, for me to be representative for students to know what they can do. And with that being said, we believe that California deserves a diverse, thriving teacher workforce that is well prepared and able to advance equity and justice and provide all the learning supports that every student reaches or every student needs to reach their full potential.

We're looking for teachers who will see the humanity in their students and see the potential that they have to be a part of STEAM. Now, before I move forward, I think I should just give a little brief synopsis of what is a teacher residency program? Well, it's a credential program that's built on a medical residency model. Teacher residencies provide an alternative pathway right? Let me see. They provide an alternative pathway to teacher certification that's grounded in deep clinical training.

So residents will apprentice alongside an expert teacher in a high needs classroom for a full academic year. They take closely linked coursework from a partnering university that leads to a credential and sometimes a master's degree. At the end of that residency year, they receive living stipends. And thanks to the Department of Ed and that push around and Superintendent Thurman and pushing for an increase in the stipends.

They're now able to get a $40,000 stipend as part of the residency program, which is huge when we're trying to recruit a diverse teacher workforce, right, because that funding really helps bring in more candidates of color, and then in exchange, they have to commit to teaching in the district for at least four years beyond the residency. Now, the interesting thing about that is they have four years.

They allow districts to hire teachers who understand the inner workings of their school district, and they're prepared to teach day one. Okay, so that's huge. Now, here's the thing about teacher residency grants in the state, right? They are an effective way to address the California teacher shortage and to diversify the workforce because they attract more teachers of color, produce teachers in high shortage fields. But these are the high shortage fields that it addresses currently.

Special education, bilingual education, Stem, computer science, transitional kindergarten or kindergarten, and recruiting, developing, supporting, or developing support systems for or providing outreach and communications and strategies to retain a diverse teacher workforce. Shorthand, you can give funding if your goal is to diversify the teacher workforce to fit your local needs. But there is also another possibility where, if this commission can look at the annual analysis of hiring and vacancy data, they can designate another shortage area in that respect.

So the thing I think would be important to note here is that when you have a program, like a residency program that is so effective at training teachers, it brings in more teachers of color and there's funding, and they are being apprenticed alongside a teacher or a seasoned teacher for a year. The opportunity here would be to see, can we use this type of model to get more arts teachers into the profession, right? So currently, right now, I'm just looking at the number 213.

I just did a quick analysis. Of the 213 CTC grants that were given out percentage wise, 46% were focusing on STEM and 54% were focusing on diversification of the teacher workforce. Computer Science 1%. Right. So we have some work to do to kind of bump up the steam, but there's nothing in there with regards to art, and that is becoming both the challenge and the opportunity, right, because it's not a designated shortage area as of yet. Right.

But we think with Prop 28 and all the teachers that we're going to need in a couple of years, if that were people could access this funding to develop this amazing model to train effective art teachers. But one way that they can do that now is through the diversification of the workforce designation.

So if the idea is to recruit and retain a diverse teacher workforce that represents California state population as well as local diversity, if those candidates that you're bringing in, they do fit that category, so to speak, but they also happen to be wanting to get a dance credential or a. Theater, credential or VAPA, it's possible to utilize the residency program to bring in more teachers.

And I would recommend that's something that we do, because after three to five years, after three to five years in the profession, residency programs have higher retention rates than your traditional intern programs or student teaching programs. And when I say higher retention rates, we're talking about generally ranging from 80% to 90% in the same district after three years and 70% to 80% after five years.

So when you're thinking about putting the A in STEAM, right, and trying to address this huge equity issue, if you don't have teachers or people who are there and present to make sure that students are developing that art, literacy that they need, the STEM skills that they need, the computer science literacy that they need. How can we then ensure that art becomes important in the education of our students? So I just wanted to share that with you.

So again, the challenge here and the opportunity is how might we use residency programs as a way to train an effective teacher workforce with a VAPA focus, knowing that VAPA is not currently a designated shortage area?

Thank you, Dr. Hanowitz. And Dr. Ollison. Again, Dr. Hanowitz is the Ed. Honowitz is the chief Executive officer, and Dr. Ollison is the co-Director of the California Teacher Residency Lab. I know, Ed, you flew up from Southern California, so thanks for doing that. Next up, our next panelist is Penelope Oliver, who is only 17 years old but has already founded her own nonprofit to provide equitable access to arts education. Penelope is also a student voices advocate with Create California. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me and allowing student voice at the table. My name is Penelope Oliver. I'm a senior at Horizon Charter School . . . at Sierra College, which allows me to be here today and do activism. All Access Arts aims to bridge the gap between the well provided with arts education and those who need it the most and aren't getting it in schools.

So we operate by doing community partnerships around the greater Sacramento area with shelters, community centers, Title One schools, and have art clubs completely grassroots, completely free. Actually brought some art today to show just how powerful the arts are. So we just wrapped up summer intensives at Wellspring Women's Center, which is a drop in women's center in Oak Park. And as you can see, when we're teaching STEM and when we're teaching arts, all of it is different.

And this allows kids to really express themselves. On a personal statement, having access to arts is a mental health resource. The arts help us grow, thrive, and heal. And oftentimes we come in and we see kids who haven't had access to any arts who are so happy to do just a simple activity like coloring, because that is the only arts education they're getting or that don't have crayons at home. And just it doesn't matter how good you are at the arts.

It's simply a pathway to expression and a student right. Putting the arts in Steam allows students to think both creatively, but also analytically. And those together is how we create critical thinkers. The facts speak for themselves via Create California, four times. Students who have an arts education are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement. They're four times more likely to receive a bachelor's degree. They're also 30% more inclined to pursue a professional career. Arts open doors.

And ultimately, the students in the California public education system today will be governing our state one day. So investing in arts and STEAM is investing in brighter futures. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. The last person of the first panel is Letty Kraus, Director of the Statewide Arts Initiative with the California County Superintendents.

Good afternoon, committee Members. My name is Letty Kraus, as you noted, and I'm the Director of the California County Superintendent Statewide Arts Initiative. The Arts initiative works through the 58 county offices of education to connect with the 10,000 plus school districts and bring arts and ensure that all students in California have access to arts education. My background is in arts education, so today, and I've been invited to talk about K-12 arts education. And I'll be coming at it from an arts education point of view.

I am going to propose I'll just put this straight up front that I'm going to propose. If we're looking to put the A back in STEAM, we must ensure that the arts, just like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, are included in every student's core curriculum everywhere in the state. First, though, let's paint a picture of what STEAM can look and sound like in a classroom.

Now, I would just want to note that I know that STEAM can be grounded in civics, environmental problems, health, or many other contexts. But I have chosen an example that I connect to, and it is based on what I learned from listening to Imagineers at Disneyland. So I'm just putting that out there. So, you know so the assignment of the classroom is theme park experience. And in our imagined classroom, students are designing a proposal for a new theme park experience. They're doing research. They're having discussion.

What will theme park guests see, hear, and feel to make the experience believable? What artwork, music, or other audio will we create to shape the experience? How will technology drive this? What are the technical and engineering needs for the architecture and mechanics of the experience? So, essentially, they're engaging in design thinking. Together, team Members will divide the tasks. They'll sketch, sculpt, paint, use computer graphic design programs. They'll build and test prototypes, write code, and create and record video and audio as they develop their project.

They're excited about this because they can exercise their creativity and apply the knowledge and skills they've learned in their other courses. And they can also engage in a real world problem. They're looking forward to presenting their work to the peers they have and their families and the community Members. So why are they prepared to succeed in this project? Well, that's because they've had a wellrounded educational experience that includes the arts as part of the core curriculum in elementary school.

They've also had integrated arts, science, and math learning experiences that are designed by knowledgeable teachers who work together to ensure there are learning objectives for each content area, and all learning is advanced in each content area. So that's the picture I wanted to paint. And so, in essence, to sum up, those students have had access to regular standards based instruction within the school day for all of the Steam content areas, including the arts.

Not only are they benefiting in the myriad ways that we at this hearing already know the arts benefit students, but they're also preparing for the future college career, civic life, and they're gaining skills and experiences that will help them to access opportunities in the creative economy workforce. So, again, if we're looking to put the A back in STEAM, well, then I'm going to be the broken record and say we must ensure that the arts are included in every student's core curriculum everywhere in the state.

So the good news is that thanks to recent statewide efforts among advocacy organizations, legislators, and voters who are committed to updating and expanding arts education in California, we are positioned to do that with modernized arts standards. And I didn't write them. I just led the committees that wrote them, committees of classroom experts. And I know also that Senator Allen was on the IQC when we did write our arts framework. So thank you for that. But we do have momentum.

And with Prop 28, boy, do we have momentum. So we can make all of the investment of the past seven years. It's only been seven years that we've made all of this progress, including the credential. And I am a former dance teacher with a supplementary authorization. I didn't have PE credential, but I had the authorization. So what the first thing they did was stick me in a PE class. And when I said what, they said, well, you know how you can teach dance?

So that's an aside. But I'm grateful for the credential to be back. So I just want to take a few more minutes to talk about the arts framework before I conclude. Again, since the topic of putting the A back in STEAM is essentially a proposal to focus on arts integration, which is that's what that is, I want to sort of provide a couple of key points about the Arts Framework chapter that deals with arts integration. So, first of all, there's the promise of arts integration.

Why is it great? Well, it's because in our classrooms, intentional and strategic arts integration can help students apply and connect and get engaged with what they're learning. When it is successful, student learning is transformed. It transcends the boundaries of the content, and it provides valuable learning and problem solving opportunities. Now, a cautionary note, though, we have to remember some issues that are important to the field. One of those is the fear that integrated learning, including an esteemed context, would replace specific arts instruction.

So we have to note that that's there, and we have to pay attention to that. We also have to be mindful of instruction that uses the arts to teach the content and therefore is not true. Arts integration, that's another issue that's out there. We also have to remember that content must be thoughtfully selected. And to be authentic, the goal must be clear are we learning or are we applying what we've learned? And the time is needed to do that to make those connections.

So I will just propose to you that the state adopted arts framework that we have provides guidance on all of this, along with specifics for each arts discipline. And it must be a primary resource for STEAM implementation. So I will conclude by saying that when we consider policy components and practices that support STEAM education, I'd like to bring your attention to three areas access and there's the broken record point about making sure that we have arts in every school, for every child, everywhere in the state.

Funding. We need to remember that it's not just Prop 28 that funds arts education. We need healthy programs that draw from multiple funding streams, and we need to help people keep the aye on the ball. About that. We need to provide successful funding models for large, small, and rural settings. We need to ensure we're providing funding for professional learning so that all teachers engaged in arts and Steam are properly equipped to do that.

And finally, if we're talking about statewide coordination and leadership to put the A back in STEAM, state leadership should recognize and provide ongoing supports throughout the state for the continued efforts to implement the standards and framework. And if the state designates a leadership position or office for Steam, they should also do so for the arts. When I first came to CDE, we had a STEM office, and we also had an Arts leadership office. And so I would just end with that. And thank you very much for this opportunity to sit here with my esteemed colleagues and to talk to all of.

Thank you. Great panel. Questions from the members.

Yeah, I totally hear you. Obviously, arts education existed long before Prop 28. But it was put together largely because there was a kind of a sense of inadequacy and a need, and I think also sense that the public really cared a great deal about it. So I would love to, first of all, thank everybody for all the work that you do every day to make things better for our young people with regards to arts education, and then do a bit of a deep dive into some of the issues.

What sort of new opportunities exist both with the passage of the measure but also through other advocacy work, how the VAPA's team dynamic might work within the context of Prop 28. And also I'll ask Mary too, who at CDE should the LEAs be contacting if they've got questions about what qualifies for Prop 28 funds and the current status of Prop 28 implementation. So let me throw all that out there.

Well, that's a good question. No, actually, at this point, it's living in our College and Career Transition Division. Because that's the place where we have, I'm sure you've had Pete Callas testify a number of times. It's living there right now, but that's only because there's a career pathway for the arts and music and education. But there's only one person there, and she's really more of a career pathways person.

So we do have our FAQs up. It's between our government affairs. I will get you, you can call me, I don't really. But it's kind of been living in Pete Callas's shop in career college transitions, but that's not where it should live. That just happens to be where it landed because there's one person who knows about arts media education there.

So what's the plan, then? We got to be ready, right? I'm already getting calls from school districts in my area saying, hey, what should we be doing to prepare for this funding? So what's the plan for implementation? What sort of resources and assistance are we giving to school districts as they're trying to navigate all this?

Right now that's where it's living, and it's living at a division director level because we don't really have staff aside from that. So it's kind of being spread out between our Government Relations, Government Affairs Division who is working on the Prop 28 legislation itself, our fiscal folks that are trying to get the money out, and then we've got Pete Callas, who is our division director, who's really trying to lead the charge on this.

So it's almost by committee at this point at the Department that we're trying to support this, but we just don't have, as Letty said, we don't have an arts person. We don't even have a STEM person at the Department. So it is by committee at this point. Hate to tell you that, but that's how we're trying to implement from a fiscal standpoint and from at least the division director that has one person who does career pathways. We've got a STEAM little work group, but that is made up of some of our people from expanded learning and our computer science coordinator.

So at this point we have our FAQs up and right now Pete Callas is the one who is the one who has the email box and the phone number, and so everything is being directed to him. And then we kind of fan out ho can answer the different questions that come in. If it's fiscal, we send it over to our fiscal people. If it's an actual legislative question, we send it over to our legislative people. And if we're looking at some sort of programming support, we send it over to Pete around the arts.

Okay, maybe I can send this over to Letty. What are you hearing from your superintendents on this? Is there work underway with School Board Association and ACSA and the county superintendents to try to create an infrastructure to make this implementation successful?

Yes. So one thing that we're doing is we did get a little extra money from the person that funds the arts initiative or the organization. And in our eleven service regions we have provided boot camp events where we invite teams from districts to come and plan around what we do know about Proposition 28. And one of the things that we're encouraging everyone to do is do their baseline, look at what do we have, look at the opportunities for growth, and plan for how funding can be used.

So we are working a lot with our arts leads in the regions to ensure that we're offering places and time and support to plan. We're also, I work closely with Create California and we're also talking with ACSA and we're working together to develop a toolkit around implementation. But one of the conditions of that is that it must align with CDE guidance.

But then you have all these rural and small places that don't have those resources. So there's a lot of concern about, well, if we don't know the rules, then we don't want to get out there. We want to wait, but we can't really wait. We're supposed to start. And so we do worry that there's a chilling effect to happen and ultimately what could happen in those places is that they give the money back. So we don't want that to happen. So I think the concerns really are around the lack of guidance but I think there's also widespread recognition that the proposition itself left a lot of things in a place where they're maybe not so clear to interpret and therefore that's why there's caution, I would say, with CDE and there's also caution with the superintendents.

So we are trying to stay in tune with that and do what we can while we wait for things to settle. Mostly the superintendents are concerned. First of all, they're supporters of the arts. That's why we have an arts initiative separate from anything else in the organization. And they're really concerned about the rural end of things, the small end of things. Half of our counties have under 30,000 students. There's a lot more places like Los Angeles County can really take off because they have a very robust ecosystem for the arts anyway.

Senator, let me give you the, and there is the email address, the Prop28@cde.ca.gov. So if there are people who we're taking in comments, we're taking in emails. And so I just wanted to make sure you had that that was on the record as well.

Thank you.

As the email address that is available.

Do you have a sense of when we're going to be able to provide our LEAs and superintendents with the kind of guidance that Letty's talking about? I totally understand that the time frame set up in the proposition was probably too ambitious given the way that the bureaucracy works. That being said, it is what it is and we've got all these folks that are on the ground who have responsibilities now under Prop 28 and they're chomping at the bit to provide all the new opportunities that they could provide.

Yeah, and I think the guidance is not far off because we are talking to Create California now, we are talking to ACSA, we're coming together and the toolkit is coming through. So I think the issue was who's in charge? That is kind of where we're at, who was in charge and now we are starting to zero in on something. I will get you back where we are on the guidance but I know we're working on it and I think we just finalized a couple of the questions and they might be either in I think we needed some language around the supplement supplant was one of the biggest questions that we had. Right?

And that had to be figured out because that was the biggest question we were getting from the field for months and months. And so since that has been answered, I think we can start moving forward. But that was a big uncertainty that was impacting even the guidance that we could put out. So, just so you know, we'll definitely be getting back to you on that.

Yeah, vitally important. I don't mean to exclude everyone else from any thoughts on this process. Obviously, I think if anything, the overwhelming support for the measure really does underscore how much our fellow Californians believe in and really want to invest in this space. I mean, everything that everyone said in their presentations I think resonate with the general public. Certainly do, it does with us. So, yeah.

I happen to be a board member of Create California which is an arts group that is deeply engaged in this and I would just say I'm encouraged that there's some good conversation happening with folks on the ground. Right? Those people that are charged with implementation, including their representative association, so ASCA and other CTA. The idea is the Department needs to get informed via hearing what are the issues of the folks actually charged with implementation.

So we're still at, Create California also put out an FAQ, they're working directly with the Department to try and clarify and make sure that what's coming out is consistent and clear to people on the ground. But there's a lot of complicated issues around base-level funding and the waivers and a whole set of things. So again, the encouraging part is all the folks are actually in I think meaningful discussion about how do we problem solve and sort through it.

Thank you.

I don't think I'd have any question. Personally, I don't have any issue with that at all. I think it will be a matter of, once again, I think we have our framework, and we have lots of frameworks. We have great frameworks that sit there on the shelves. And I think this is the time where we just have to lift up the work, the good work, that has been done, over the years and continue to get that out there.

And that is where I think as a department, communications wise, we could be a lot better at that, and we should be working with our partners in the counties and within the LEAs to push that out. And we're working more and more towards that, because these are great frameworks that have been in place. And so I don't see it -- I don't know where we are in any kind of a cycle with even any curriculum in that area.

Based on what I see happening in the world, I think our frameworks are what they are for quite a while. But they're all updated, so that's the good news. And they address everything in the world.

In the world. But we have to have people use them and we have to lift them up and use them as models. And that is something that I think we just have to be better at. And so I don't disagree. We're not going to fight. We're good. I think we're great.

I do think the science framework does contain an access and equity chapter that references STEAM quite a bit. So just note that and then, yes, the frameworks -- I'm a little biased because I worked in that office. I'm sorry.

But when she left, she took it all with her. She was the only one. It was like-

Goodbye, Letty.

And I think that's where we end up. We create frameworks, we work on these things, we make these great products, and then we don't really have any capacity to do anything afterwards, unfortunately, which is a huge challenge for us. We just have to move on to the next framework and the next curriculum. But I have absolutely no issue at all with ensuring that we have arts as part of our core curriculum. I think it's a fantastic thing.

Great. Fantastic. Thank you so much to our first group of panelists. Really appreciate great discussion and fine points and thanks for being here. Now I'm going to move on to our second panel, focusing on higher education to career pathways. We're going to start with two professors from Sacramento City College who run the makerspace program on their respective campuses. Tom Cappelletti is the Project Director and Faculty Coordinator, and Pamela Posz is the Librarian and Professor. Ms. Posz is Paul Mason's granddaughter. The very same Paul Mason who wrote the Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure, which is a bit of a Bible in some legislative arenas. So thank you. Thank you Mr. Capaletti and Ms. Posz for joining us. Please begin.

Hi everybody. Thanks for having us, by the way. The very first thing I want to do is invite you to the Sacramento City College makerspace. We're only two and a half miles away and we would love to host you, and all the panelists, if you want to come, maybe early next year. I had mentioned it to Annie -- to see makerspace in action at a community college.

Looking at the agenda, it's interesting how it starts at community college, goes to state and then goes to UC, and it's like, I'm glad to say -- I'm a product of all that. I grew up in Napa, I went to Napa Valley College, I dabbled at Sac State, and I ended up and graduated at UCLA in product design. And so I'm a product of STEAM my entire life and public education and it's been fantastic.

UCLA at the time, it wasn't the art center, but it had a fantastic product design and industrial design art program, merged with the arts. This was in the 1980s. And we got to see design labs, metal labs, wood shops, all -- fantastic instructors that all worked in the industry -- the people that worked at Charles and Ray Eames' office were our instructors. And I was immersed in design thinking, iterative thinking, 40 years ago. And I thought, "What? This is fantastic." Then I took off.

I went to work in the film industry, I had a stint in the US Coast Guard, I worked in the fashion industry, all in California -- well, the Coast Guard was all over -- but then I ended up at Apple, as a trainer, teaching creative products to educators. And so, my whole life has been this kind of STEAM composition. And 17 years ago, I started at Sac City, and as just an adjunct professor, and it changed my life. We are the front lines.

So we're here, today, reporting from the front lines. I've taught over 5,000 students in 17 years. And the makerspace came about five years ago from an initiative from the State Chancellor's Office, the Community College Chancellor's Office. There was a visionary vice chancellor there, Van -- I always mess her name up -- Van Ton-Quinlivan. She split away $20 million to grant community colleges the opportunity to build a makerspace. And I'll go into a bit about that.

It was a competitive process, and 20 community colleges around the state were given two years of funding to do that. And we were lucky enough to get it. And then they said, "You're on your own." My college had great administrators and decided to use strong workforce program funding to continue our makerspace. So what is a makerspace? So it's basically a place that provides tools, technology, and knowledge for learners and entrepreneurs.

It results in prototyping, learning new skills, basically modern wood shop, modern CNC manufacturing, digital tools, and it supports pathways to all kinds of jobs, creative jobs, technical jobs, manufacturing jobs. And I've seen, in the last five years -- it's been five years, and some of that's been with COVID -- I have seen lives being changed. Students come in, not sure what they want, and they're in this warm, loving hub with artists, with people, volunteers from the community, and they get mentored the old fashioned way.

And then we find them pathways to higher ed. Some of them -- some of them want to go straight to industry. And there's so many mom-and pop-manufacturing companies, and folks are starting their own Etsy shops and going to fairs and making money and doing side hustles. It's been the most eye-opening thing I've seen, and that's just been in the last five years. So, community colleges, too, are sometimes the only place for young people after they finish their compulsory education.

It's a place for them to figure out what they want to do. And so, we want to provide them with this kind of non-classroom place where they can come -- everything's free, they can go deep or they can just learn a few skills and then, hopefully, stick around. And so I've seen it happen in person. Pam, too, will talk about it. So I think you can tell I'm all about makerspaces, because they are STEAM in action.

And I just think -- I'll leave you with this and hand it over to Pam. I toured UC Berkeley's makerspace. It's the Jacobs Institute. That one makerspace has more funding, at $30 million, than all the community college makerspaces combined. One -- and I was lucky enough to go to UCLA. It just shows you the inequity of it. Going to UC is amazing, but it's a small percentage of our young folks, so I'm all about equity and access and inclusion, and I think putting these in community colleges is essential. Pam.

Hi. Thank you so much for having us. We were so excited to be invited and talking about art, and especially bringing art into more mainstream education. Personally, I majored in art anthropology, because my parents wanted me to do something more academic. That's why I majored in anthropology. The art was what I particularly wanted to do, so they really wanted me to get a safe degree. However, through my career, my art degree has definitely benefited me more than -- I use it all -- I mean, just in ways that you can't imagine.

Like, I work in a library. We talk about redesigning the space, like what color is the carpeting, things like that. All that is really critical. I've been working in a variety of library settings for a long time: Library of Congress, State Law Library, Sac State, UC Davis, I've been working at City College for 25 years. I have continued my art practice my entire life. But I started my craft and design business in 1997, and I now have four Etsy shops. So I'm just going to talk about things that I have either noticed that are important, I think, or experienced myself. So I graduated UC Davis. Great art school. My only criticism is they taught me nothing about how to actually make a living as an artist.

And I am passionate -- this is one of the reasons why I love the makerspace -- about enabling creatives to make a living as a creative person, not having to do it as a side hustle, because the world would be so much better for so many reasons. And if I'd had access to a makerspace when I graduated from Davis, I may have become an artist full time, instead of going into a librarian, which has been great and everything. Still, art is so important. And just generally, artists should be valued more.

We just see the world in different ways. We can help people visualize, process things. And really practical things -- there was some sort of experiment, in science, where they were figuring out how to fold proteins online, and they had people -- it was a crowdsourced project. The artists were much better at figuring out how to fold the proteins than the science people -- because visual thinkers. And like, doctors benefit from improv training, for example. There are all sorts of ways that really help.

I know that sports are important and valued, but for some of us, higher quality of life relates to a vibrant art scene. For example, I am much more likely to care about going to the Crocker Museum or MOSAC, which is the local science museum, than I am to attend a King's game. The arts and crafts community is a multi-billion dollar industry. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of centralization and centralized support, because it's mostly made up of individuals and very small businesses.

One part of the economy that demonstrates this is craft markets. The people selling at craft markets are predominantly women. Often, they can't hold down a regular job because of issues, such as childcare or lack of higher education. But they are trying to supplement their family's education. And these are the same issues that often make them -- people -- more likely to be prayed upon by MLM, multi-level marketing, because they don't have an ability to make a living, and they get sucked into that.

Small business grants would be a great way to support art entrepreneurs. There are just a few basic art items that make it easier for people to start selling. But makerspaces are just, really, such a great way to support local arts community. Although there are for-profit makerspaces, the best model, really, to reach the most people is to put them in preexisting institutions, such as public libraries, schools, colleges and universities.

This provides the greatest opportunities for those who need them most, such as those individuals on the lower-income part of the economic ladder. Public libraries and community colleges are really some of the best options, because the populations we serve, like public libraries, are already in the neighborhoods where you would want a makerspace anyway, and they exist in that. Whereas the for-profit model, the people who need it most are the people who can't afford the fee to pay for for-profit.

The K-12 system -- as a librarian, I'm going to throw this in -- libraries are drastically underfunded. It's a huge issue for so many reasons. And just as suggestions, if you funded makerspaces and school libraries, that would help both libraries and schools. And also, don't take away the jobs that school librarians need to do, like critical thinking, everything like that, but add it as an option for them.

And then we need increased support for non-transfer options in the community college system, because there's been such a focus on transfer. Let's see. And then we need money to market and promote makerspaces and get the word out about what we offer. And then, we've been working to help makerspaces organize in order to share information resources. I founded the NorCal Makers Guild, and we've been working with an organization in Ohio, Maker Town, that provides structure, support, and an app for local makers. Consumers like to stay and shop local. Maker Town supports that in Ohio. We need economic support to make this happen here and other areas around California. And then finally, again, we would love to invite you and everyone here to come visit the makerspace at City College, because there's nothing like seeing it in action.

Thank you both very much. Our next panelist drove from San Francisco State to share with us the innovative programs happening on their campus. Dr. Cynthia Freeman Grutzik is the Dean of the Graduates College of Education at San Francisco State University and Dr. Carmen Domingo is the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State as well. Thank you both for joining us.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Speaker Emeritus Rendon, Senator Allen and Assembly Member Boerner. Thank you so much for having us here. Happy to be here from San Francisco State. I'm Cynthia Grutzik. I'm the Dean of the Graduate College of Education, and I'll let my colleague introduce herself in a moment. We're going to be making four points and leaving you with some takeaways. But I can tell, already, that what we're talking about ties together a lot of the things that you've heard from previous panelists. So this is great. We're here to give you some really concrete examples of how we integrate arts and sciences, and also career pathways, at San Francisco State. So you want to introduce yourself, and then we'll talk about our colleges?

Yeah. So, I'm Carmen Domingo, and I am the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering. My background is as a cell and molecular biologist, and I did my PhD at Berkeley. So I know that makerspace is really -- Yeah. So I serve -- we have about over 7,000 majors, in six different departments, that span from biology to psychology, as well as two schools, a School of Engineering and a School of the Environment.

And the Graduate College of Education has about 1200 students. In our college, we have eleven credential programs. So all the ones you could imagine that span the needs in our K-12 system and soon the PK-3 credential, which we're very excited about.

So, as you've all heard, STEAM is an approach to teaching science, technology, engineering and math that integrates, intentionally, the arts, as a way to learn and explore and demonstrate knowledge across disciplines in a very holistic way.

I think it's great that we are both here together, as deans from collaborative colleges, because we take this very seriously. In our college, we've just started an arts integration initiative. It's donor funded at this point, but it's faculty with time to actually work with other faculty in the secondary ed department to integrate the arts into every subject area. And we've brought on board working artists to help with some programming in the college to just make visible the arts as an important factor in every credential program. These are the future teachers who are going to be out in the high schools. So for them to leave us with this clear concept that this integration must happen, is really important to us.

So, an example in the College of Science and Engineering are our field stations. We have the only field station in the San Francisco Bay, and we also have a field station up in the Sierras. And this is a place where we do nature-based learning, where students can observe the natural world and integrate it into their creativity, problem solving and solution building, especially in the context of sea level rise, wildfires and many other concerns that we have about our state. And importantly, for many students that are from urban settings, they've never been in nature. And so, using that as a place to instill learning and appreciation for our spaces in California and the creativity, it's a natural place to integrate art.

We want to give you a couple more examples of how we integrate across our colleges. One is that the Center for Science and Math Education, which lives in Dean Domingo's college, but which we also share, is a collaboration that recruits science and math teachers. We have the teacher fellows program. It's the NSF-funded Noise Grants, STEM House for elementary teachers, Math Circles for community students, and eventually, we hope to integrate our Arts Integration Center into this framework as well. And I'll pass it to you.

So the important part is really reducing silos. That's always an impediment in higher education. And so, one example that we have is our Climate Change Certificate program, where students can come in with an interest in climate change and build it across all disciplines, regardless of their major. So it allows students to take art classes, science classes, policy classes, social justice classes, all around a theme. So another important part is learning spaces. And we heard a really impassioned -- about makerspaces.

And so we also have a new science building. It's the first science building on our campus in 50 years -- I know. This gave us an opportunity to really reflect on what was important in the way that we teach science. So we have a makerspace, a garage space, but importantly, art influences the way we teach science. So we have a chemistry studio-style instruction. So typically, if most of you have taken chemistry, you'll have the lecture and then the lab component.

Now, who's thought of teaching art, where you get a lecture on art and then you do the art? That makes no sense. So the way that we can now teach chemistry in this new space, is that you hear a little bit about the chemistry and then you get to do the experiment and then you get to hear a little bit -- so it is integrated. And so, it is a new way of teaching chemistry that's impactful, and it's going to help retain students in the sciences. So we learn from the arts, as well.

We want to highlight a few challenges and ideas for integration and collaboration in STEAM, and I think some have been mentioned already, so that was interesting to hear. One is that -- one of the challenges that we've heard, already, about is around resources for implementation. There's been really unprecedented funding from the state around teacher preparation, in the form of residency grants, paraprofessional grants, many other things, and we really welcome those. And we note that the funding goes directly to the LEAs, the local education agencies.

Yet partnerships are really required for those things to work, and finding the funding for the operation of it, the coordination of things, the partnership work, is what's a challenge. So this is something that we work on with our partners, for sure. I'm glad to hear the conversation around Prop 28, because we, in teacher education world, have been watching that closely. It's wonderful to see that come down to the schools and the school districts and the counties. We're worried about arts teachers in our college, for sure.

I read a report -- and I think it's been referred to here -- that they anticipate needing maybe 15,000 new art teachers. And we currently have about 5,000 in practice right now. So how do we prepare those arts teachers across all of the areas of the arts? Where's the people time that it takes to develop those programs? That's what concerns me, where I sit, as dean of a college of education. We've already had local districts reaching out to us, asking us how to do this together, and we're eager to work with them. But the funding and the challenge of implementing those wonderful initiatives is what we're working on.

I'm going to give another example, and it's around the Computer Science Supplementary Authorization. So San Francisco State is the lead for Northern California computer science authorization. And that was authored by AB 130, Section 143. It requires 100 percent cost match of funding, which is a barrier, especially for economically challenged school systems. So although San Francisco State would like to train more teachers in how to teach computer science, many of the teachers don't have the resources to actually participate in this program. And we've actually went out and got significant funding from NSF, the National Science Foundation, to help us do this good work. And I can't get the funding for the teachers to be able to participate in it.

So I guess the idea around these resources is that if there would be something like an arts integration grant program that would allow, not just LEAs, but also IHEs, to apply for funding that would help us do some of the implementation, the people time around coordinating these important initiatives.

So STEM programs and industry haven't reflect the demographics of California. And we need to do a better job to make sure that the career pipeline reflects our new generation of people. And as a Latina, this is something that really resonates and is important to me. So I wanted to just provide an example where San Francisco State has a very strong partnership with Genentech, which is a big biotech company.

And what's really unique about this partnership is that Genentech recognized that they wanted to invest in students that lived in their neighborhoods -- not across the country -- in their neighborhoods that have not traditionally had access to STEM training. And so we need to encourage more, sort of, local investment in communities that haven't had access to this type of training and recognize that it is an economic benefit to the region.

And I think when we were talking -- actually, Carmen, I want to add -- that our industry partners recognize the importance of STEAM and are very enthusiastic about this kind of integration, because they are looking for people to work in their companies that really get it -- about how to think with design thinking and that aren't just focused in one direction. So we want to leave you with some takeaways, keeping an eye on the clock because we want to leave room for our fellow speakers. Four takeaways. One is: collaboration really is at the heart of STEAM -- collaboration across colleges, across institutions, between IHEs and K-12. Resources for that kind of collaboration are really important all the way through.

And that partners need to create and sustain effective partnerships -- that we really need the funding commitment across K-12, community college and comprehensive, ... like, CSU system. And that learning spaces really matter, that if we want to be innovative in how we teach and influence our students, we need to invest in the learning spaces that we have.

And then finally, as we said, these investments are so important, especially when we're working with students who've historically been left out of these opportunities. Creativity and innovation comes from different cultures and lived experiences and perspectives. And so this is what we are determined to bring along in our programs at San Francisco State, and we're happy to share more information about that with you. Thank you.

Thank you both very much. Our next panelist, Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, is the Dean of the Arts, a distinguished professor of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her most recent award winning films are distributed by Women Making Movies, and her newest book is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Thank you for coming all the way from Santa Cruz.

Yes. Greetings to all of you. A special recognition to my niece, who ran here from her class at Sac City.

Are you wearing -- is that banana slug yellow?

Yes. This is a representation and a special recognition to all the banana slugs enjoying the live stream from the most beautiful campus on Earth, overlooking the Pacific, on the bluffs of the Redwood Forest. This is how the University of California, and particularly the arts division at UC Santa Cruz, puts the A in STEAM. If STEAM were a room, don't put arts in the corner.

I referenced the famous line, "Don't put baby in the corner," from the classic 80s film Dirty Dancing, because you immediately understand what I mean -- that art should not be derivative to STEM. Art powerfully employs emotion and reason, both, to create common understanding and to communicate, seemingly, so easily. Art gives context and meaning to graphs, statistics, metrics, algorithms, enabling us to grapple with the unpredictability of life itself. Art expresses what five-paragraph essays cannot.

Painting shows the limits of lined notebooks when its expression truly requires large, blank canvases. Music show us that we don't yet know how to hear, until we hear sounds that make us feel our body anew, experiencing our feet doing surprising things. Films reveal emotions we did not know existed when unleashing in us different kinds of tears, from laughing or weeping. Whereas science predicts and hypothesizes; art is at home with ambiguity, at times, more comfortable with the questions than the answers -- articulating the unanticipated and making real worlds that don't yet exist.

I will show you how placing all of the STEAM letters on equal footing gives us our best chances at solving our collective crises today, and what the UC does to make it happen. At UC Santa Cruz, scientists and artists work brilliantly together, as we recognize and respect each other's forms of knowledge. Scientists and artists are better together when we come in harmony within the UC system.

The Institute of Arts and Science, IAS, our first climate-controlled and collecting gallery at UC Santa Cruz, converges arts and sciences without hierarchizing discipline. Producing exhibitions and programs on the west side of our city, bridging town and gown with free access, busing in K-12 students from our region and providing paid internships to high school and college students alike. The California Legislature propels the IAS work with its California Climate Action Grant.

Executive Director Rachel Nelson's "An Aesthetics of Resilience" collaborates with the Friedlaender Lab to study the impacts of environmental change on marine animals to advance social change through the arts. Come visit and see how we do it. The state legislature's funding of the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience catalyzes powerful art and science projects, such as our games professor, Misha Cardinas, who creates 3D-printed and augmented-reality interactive sculptures, as she pipes in science fiction short stories so that we could imagine possible climate futures.

Art professor Jennifer Parker's Climate Action Lab works with our Seymour Marine Discovery Center to generate art, science and technology responses to communities' climate vulnerability. I know you want to experience all of these. Funded by the California Arts Council, the Center for the Force Majeure, directed by Josh Harrison, facilitates collaborations with tribal members, artists and scientists in Nevada and Placer counties, focusing on plants important to Washoe culture bearers, for whom forced removal from traditional gathering grounds decimates their access.

These projects evidence how STEAM responds to the critical issues of our time and centers communities most vulnerable to climate change. So please continue to bolster state and federal funding of the arts. The arts need resources. Arts, in its seriousness, significance and substance, does not happen without funding. As the leader of the arts division at UC Santa Cruz, I refute the narrative that art equals poverty. STEM should not be the single path to how we define success attributing all career paths there.

Art needs resources to put our students on the same career footing. Let us, together, affirm our students decision to honor their voices and visions in pursuing the arts. Help us enable opportunities. Join me in refusing a false divide in our disciplines to empower our students. By advocating for our art students, we ensure achieving true excellence with equity, innovating through inclusion. I share with you, now, what we are doing with students at UC Santa Cruz Arts Division.

Our Arts Professional Pathways Program, APP, brings industry and independent art together to show the infinity of possibilities in careers that exist and do not yet exist. At our annual Find Your Path event, hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students participate in workshops with creative industry professionals and development support staff, who help them with resume writing, networking, thank you letters and skills building in interviews.

Please connect to us with companies who value STEAM and care about a talented and diverse workforce to instill our students with hope as they complete their education. They are most vulnerable to dropping out at the upper division level, when careers do not appear on the horizon and housing is hard to find. Every summer, my office funds internship scholarships for students to support basic needs and living expenses while doing unpaid or low-paid internships. Opening the door to professionalization and mentorship.

My Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence and Equity supports completion and dissemination of student research. The University of the Future Now Grants invite students to identify what should constitute knowledge and practice in the 21st century to help them claim their education with the new demographics of our state. These efforts are currently funded by my own startup funds as dean, which runs out this June 2024. It will continue through private donations from alumni and our Advocacy Council. So please help us. Partner with us, and change lives.

If not you, introduce us to those who can help. Arts Bridge, a UC-wide program, places students in the K-12 public schools in our local community to teach for ten weeks. They are paid through a grant from the UC Office of the President, which lasts until 2025. So we need your help in this inspiring, life changing project, before that money runs out. Our Dean's Student Leadership Board grooms arts administrators and policymakers and legislators trained in the arts, developing leadership skills and building community in the arts, along the way.

They are, right now, ready to intern for you. As research repeatedly shows, art is better when all have access to it. Similarly, STEAM is better when all forms and methods of knowledge are recognized as needed. We install these interdisciplinary student success programs, because we believe that everyone, in all our dazzling diversity, should have a place at the table so that our state may have its best hope for resolving our most critical issues today. Our students, like Saul Viegas, deserve the good things that we can enable. His breathtaking work illustrates the beauty of specimens in our world, empowering sciences with aesthetics, in the QR code he created for this presentation, which includes all of the programs I describe today.

So in closing, to go on with STEM, and not STEAM, is to exclude the divergence and diversity, with consequences we cannot afford. Let us not squash artistic impulses and desires. Let us remember our own need to go to the theater, to experience dance, to feel movies and immerse ourselves in concerts. We read criticism, theory and history about art, because it helps us understand what binds us together today, and what kind of art is possible and needed now.

Our kids see us enjoy art practice and research as essential to our lives. The pandemic surely proved art is necessary to our survival. Research shows reading fiction increases empathy. An intimate act of connecting with an author ripples throughout society in how we learn how to treat each other. To center art within STEM -- STEAM -- A is right in the middle -- exposes us to the subjectivities of ourselves and others to better our relationships.

We create exclusion if we only pursue STEM and create inclusion if we pursue STEAM. Our students are distressed, anxious and depressed when they want, with all of their hearts, to incorporate the arts into their lives. The hammering by their parents, and by society, that says "Arts will equal your poverty," deprives us of resources in the arts and sends a message that we need to undo. Let us create the conditions for art to equal abundance. Thank you.

Thank you, Dean Shimizu. And we did get copies of the QR code, and we'll make sure that the Members of this committee who aren't here today get those as well. Our -- there we are. Our last panelist -- apologies -- is Jasson Crockett, Public Policy Manager with Snap Inc., which is the parent company of Snapchat. Thank you for being here today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Felt like that last presentation was art in and of itself. I could listen to you all day. I hope you're narrating your own book. I'd like to first extend my thanks to the Committee Chair and Speaker Emeritus Rendon and Vice Chair Senator Allen for having me today. My name is Jason Crockett, and I represent Snap, Inc., the parent company of Snapchat based in Santa Monica, California.

It really is an honor and a pleasure to be here with you all, today, to speak to the committee's hearing on the importance of arts and STEAM. For those who don't know, Snap is a technology company. We employ just over 5,300 people worldwide -- 2,200 here in the state of California -- and many assume that we're heavier in the STEM, but that would be wrong. Our flagship product, Snapchat, is a communication platform with over 750 million monthly average users worldwide.

We continue to advance ways for people to communicate using visual messaging. We are not social media. Rather, we are focused on building space for people to share their authentic selves and experiences with real life friends, in fun, immersive, and creative ways. At Snap, creativity is the cornerstone of everything we do. In fact, it's one of our core values. We are kind, smart, and creative.

For many, we know that introduction to the arts is a necessary and critical driver to help develop creativity throughout the entirety of a person's life, but especially at a young age. Our success as a company is predicated on so much more than coders and computer science engineers. We rely on creative minds that can help us to shape that, which is not yet realized, and help us to imagine that, which does not yet exist.

And we do not just rely on such talent, but we are committed to helping build the pool of that talent. That's why back in 2018, we launched Snap Academies, a pre-internship, summer experience, solely for community college students. We believe that talent is distributed evenly, and yet so often, our young, diverse, and incredibly creative community college students have difficulty breaking into careers in tech fields.

Students, as part of Snap Academies, are placed in one of four tracks for eight to ten weeks, earn a stipend, and receive mentorship from Snap employees. The programs include engineering, storytelling, design, and augmented reality. While engineering is fairly traditional, the design and storytelling programs are heavily rooted in artistic education, helping academy participants learn what it means to integrate artistry in a digital space, whether it's building immersive digital experiences or building a captivating narrative.

We are now reaching a place, I'm excited to say, where academy graduates have gotten internships and even jobs with Snap, and several have gone on to start their own business. Just this past week, we launched a partnership with the city of El Segundo to create several augmented reality experiences, and complement their public art exhibits. The city hired a graduate of Snap Academy's AR program to build the augmented reality activations, and it was a really exciting moment to witness.

While the Snapchat app is what Snap may be best known for today, our big bet is on the future of augmented reality. Indeed, Snap is already the leader in augmented reality technology, layering digital experiences over the real world. We see AR as an optimistic vision for how technology can be used as a tool to enhance our real world experiences, rather than escape from the real world altogether. In the most fundamental sense, much of augmented reality is a marriage of art and technology.

In these early days, we have sought to bring AR to communities to help socialize the technology, and to do that, we turn to the arts as our key ambassador. One of our most ambitious projects is a partnership with the LA County Museum of Arts -- a project called Monumental Perspectives. Over the past three years, we have worked with LACMA to pair artists from throughout LA County with augmented reality developers to create digital monuments in Snapchat that pay homage to people, places, movements and events that have been instrumental in shaping LA, but are oftentimes overlooked by textbooks and have failed to be memorialized in bronze or stone.

As we continue to create more data points on the intersection of art and technology, we have sought opportunities to inform broader discussions on the importance of art. At the start of this year, we began meeting with the California Department of Education's Arts, Media and Entertainment team to provide insight on their 2023 industry recommendations and guidance for model programs and advanced training. This is a brilliant initiative that seeks to better incorporate industry skill set needs in recommended best practices for public secondary schools across the state. While the technical skills are absolutely crucial, exposure to the arts is just as important, and just as prominent of the recommendations.

But to increase our exposure, we know schools need resources. That is why Snap was proud to support California Proposition 28, dedicating funds to arts and music and public education. Italian painter, Gino Severini, once said, "Art is nothing but humanized science." Snap has sought to merge technology and artistic creativity to enable more immersive ways for humans to experience themselves and experience the world around them.

It is paramount to our future, as a business, that this state continues to not just support, but uplift and celebrate the arts, so that all may find ways to embrace their value and continue to apply the discipline to advance all fields. And Snap will continue to be a partner in that effort. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Crockett. Question.

For our panelists.

Well, thank you. So many great ideas. I want to take everyone up on all the tour opportunities. Field trip. Field trip. First of all, I'm excited about getting the chance to go check out the makerspace. Could you -- just it's interesting -- even at my kids elementary school, they were talking about creating a makerspace. Could you give me the two sentence description of what a makerspace is?

Yeah. It's a place for folks to come together and make things. And it can be in a shoebox, it can be in a $35 million lab, but it's all about project-based learning, collaborative learning, and mentors to show you how to make stuff.

But it's an educational tool as opposed to a co-working --

Yeah, in our case, it's strictly educational and also encouraging people to strike out for careers and entrepreneurship, things like that. So the whole idea is we provide the tools and the training, and in a very no prereq access point, we teach courses, but we also just have free workshops for anybody that wants to come in, and we advertise them. So we'll do everything from teaching introductory sewing to advanced milling and manufacturing with CAD/CAM. And so the whole idea is to whet their appetites.

You see them in high schools and sometimes in grade schools. I mean, it sounds like almost like a craft room or an art room, but with the advent of 3D-printing and pretty much -- Cricuts are another thing, Silhouettes, are these little machines that make things -- and so, they all involve using your head creatively, but nowadays, there's some software skills involved to tangibly turn that into something else. I have students that come into our makerspace that have never lifted a hammer or a screwdriver.

Shop doesn't exist in many schools anymore. There's such inequities in high schools around the country and especially our state, depending on your zip code. So some students come in super skilled with cool makerspaces -- like Da Vinci and Davis had just spent millions of dollars, it's a charter school over in Davis -- to students that are, like, at Hiram Johnson in Sacramento that are just being thrown through. And they come to us and then their eyes just pop open because we supply everything.

You know, I believe, like it was mentioned, since I worked at Apple for several years -- the next Steve Jobs and the next Greta Gerwigs are in our midst right now, and they need to be incubated and nurtured. And it doesn't take a lot. It takes passionate faculty; as you can tell, we're sort of evangelists about it. And a space to come together, and it's not the classroom with a bunch of desks, you know? You'll see, we'll get you there. And, Pam, do you want to add to it?

Just the true secret sauce is that -- creatives hanging out with other creatives, that is really what is the magic of the space. And so, even though we have all these things --because I always say -- it has all the things to make, all the things, that you may want to. And truly, as an artist, I see stuff and I'm like, "Oh, I could make that." I'm at the point where I'm like, "Should I make that? Is it worth my time and energy?"

But the real magic is hanging out with other creatives, because everybody feeds off each other and everything like that. But I do want to -- like one of my students, I asked them, "What is the most important thing that you learned here?" And she said that it's an iterative process, and makerspaces teach you that like nothing else, just because you have to keep trying over and over again to do it.

And this is something that we're -- this effort is going on at every level. K-12 now too, you're seeing it implemented in high schools and middle schools.

Mostly high schools and middle schools. I've never seen it in an elementary school. But like I said, the library is a really good place to plonk a makerspace, because librarians -- number one, school libraries, I could go into a whole thing, this is not the place for that -- but librarians are really good at integrating technology into things. We deal with everyone. And so I would really encourage that as an option for -- but I don't want to take away from traditional library stuff because that's also super important, because libraries are places of refuge like nothing else. And the empathy piece, school libraries are like the last piece where you're getting empathy.

I would add, real briefly, that the City of Woodland Library has one of the most beautiful makerspaces I've seen on a small scale. And that's just up the road. They created a room about 1,500 square feet, and the entire community has embraced it. And they funded just one person to run it and then community volunteers. And it is spectacular to see people coming together, seniors, young folks, just to play around with technology and make buttons, badges, T-shirts, wood projects. And so that's an access point. Just like community colleges are access points for large populations.

And public libraries and community colleges are in the lower income areas in a way that -- God bless a person came out of UC and CSU -- but community colleges, if you really want to improve equity, focus on community colleges. And then public libraries would be another area. I think those two spots are really well situated to move this forward.

Okay, I got to come see it. I'm hearing all this and I'm picturing much of it, but I got to --

Come take a class. I'm teaching in the spring.

I can actually create a design thinking workshop for you all to attend. If you want to have like a -- that would be great. Yeah, we'll do it.

All right, good. Thank you. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Great. Again, a lot of field trip ideas. Just curious about issues relating to diversity, because we've talked a little bit about diversity issues thus far. So I just want to get everybody's sort of perspectives on that and tying that question, Jason, into Snap's, your summer programs. How do students get picked for that? And Snap is -- Santa Monica is in your district, too, so that's another field trip for you.

El Segundo too, as you mentioned. Literally, World Series champion El Segundo.

I'm happy to start there and then turn it over to the rest of the panelists. So our Snap Academy's program is open to community college students. It started, initially, with just Santa Monica Community College. Our first class had 15 students. Based on the success, we've expanded it to all LA County community colleges, and we now offer the program to 60 students every summer, 15 students per program.

We emphasize diversity of kind of all measures: racial ethnicity, gender, as well as socioeconomic factors in the application and the selection process. Because, again, our goal is to really reach students that oftentimes are overlooked, don't have the network, necessarily. By working with community colleges, we naturally are starting with an already more diverse pool than if we were to offer this program with our amazing UC program, for example, and even the Cal States, I would say. So that's really why we've been continually committed to working with community colleges to grow and build this program.

Great. Thank you. Other issues pertaining --

I would add, just real quickly, I mean, our school is a Hispanic-serving institution and one of the -- our college and Sacramento, as you know, is an incredibly diverse place. And being that we're downtown, diversity has never been a serious issue. But we encourage people coming together by hosting student clubs like the Umoja Club, Puente, MESA, things like that. So we've gotten a lot of buy in from a lot of different factors at the college, and it seems to be working great: bringing them all together to work on stuff together.

But you need to make sure that the faculty and the staff are diverse so that the students and the community sees themselves in the space. And that is something that's super important, is creating those pipelines so that you get diverse -- so that people see diversity. And that enables diversity.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I was just going to add, our STEM programs are very diverse. But one of the key factors is, in order to retain that, you have to give them the time and the opportunities to do these kind of hands-on projects. And most of the students are low-income, so they have side jobs. And those side jobs sometimes don't allow for the privileged time of doing these kind of interactive STEAM-like projects. And so, the key there is the fellowships, being able to pay and reduce their time being a barista or working outside jobs just to get through school. So there's some real economic barriers.

The UC system, like the CSU and the community colleges, are already a majority student-of-color population. But what does this mean in terms of bringing the arts and STEM together? I actually spoke with Saul Viegas, who's a banana slug through and through. He is an art department undergrad BA, and he's currently an MFA candidate in Digital Art and New Media program. And he's currently teaching the next generation how to create digital art, to bring fine art and digital art together.

And there's something he said to me that I'm still trying to figure out, which is: the way in which he brings different traditions and different sensibilities to his aesthetic practice, not only enriches the sciences, but requires us to think about changing the way in which we consider: where is STEM home? Where is STEAM home? We need to change our archives.

We need to change the way our departments and our exhibition spaces are organized to accommodate these new ways of thinking that come from him, certainly from his identity as a person of color working in digital art. The students know what needs to be done in the future. We need to listen to them.

Thank you very much.

And then I always think of design, because that's a piece of art and design. People sometimes refer to technology as being neutral. I hear that, actually, a fair amount. Technology is never neutral. Technology, because anything is designed by humans, is based on a specific need of humans. And the teenage girl in Mumbai has completely different needs than things -- there are huge swaths of people that we are missing in terms of helping.

The amount of opportunity that we're losing that could help all of us is spectacular, if we don't do better with diversifying things. And a huge piece of this is economics. It's economics. We all know this. So it's not the only piece of it, but it's a big piece of it, supporting people so they can afford to make a living.

Thank you. Thank you so much to all of our panelists, on both panels. I've learned a lot, and I know all the Members here have, as well. We're now going to move on to public comment. For those in the audience, please step up to the mic, if you'd like to provide public comment. Each person has two minutes. Please make sure to introduce yourself and your association.

Hello, testing. Is that? Hello, Committee Members. Dane Olsen, Media Arts specialist, teacher and leader in the development and establishment of K-12 Media Arts in LAUSD, California and nationally. Media Arts is in the California Arts Standards and Framework. It is in California Educational Code two times, for those publications and for Proposition 28. However, to be an official subject area, it needs to be in those two main sections that define an arts education.

I am proposing legislation to align ed code and request a single subject credential from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Media Arts has a broad range of forms, including video, sound, animation, graphics, interactive game design, virtual augmented reality design and AI, holography and 3D printing, and offered as a creatively, unlimited environment for STEAM inquiry and production, Media Arts is jet fuel for STEAM. Media Arts is a multimodal aesthetic synthesizer that can create, simulate, capture, organize, communicate or design anything imaginable.

Media Arts is an interactive, interdimensional textbook and transdisciplinary makerspace on steroids. This affords Media Arts students unlimited capacities to learn, experience and create, as well as program engineer, interact with, manipulate and play with math intensive 3D architectural designs, engineered interactive 3D animated models for physics principles, the human circulatory system, weather systems, video game designs for mastering mathematical operations -- the list is infinite. With profuse means and alternative pathways of learning and demonstrating their learning, all students, including those with socioeconomic challenges, have exponentially more ways of acquiring and demonstrating proficiency in any subject.

This capability presents a paradigm shift, inverting the educational system to a fully student-centered, inclusive, equitable, collaborative, active inquiry, constructivist and project-based model, aligned with the latest research in the learning sciences. As per Darlene Hammond, it is urgent that we finish the job of establishing Media Arts education as an official subject area in California by aligning educational code and creating the credential. Thank you.

Thank you. Others? Thanks so much. Thanks everyone for coming today. This concludes our Joint Committee on the Arts hearing, but only the beginning of many more discussions on STEAM and other topics, as well. Thank you all for coming, especially to our panelists. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the Joint Committee on the Arts Joint Committee on the Arts Informational Hearing on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Education, also known as thank you for all being here, especially our panels. I did it wrong. I'm going to start all over again. So we're talking about art, right? I went to a performance, it was a modern music piece in LA. Like about twelve years ago, and the piece that they were performing, I hated.

And about 25 minutes into it, somebody broke one of the strings on their violin and they started over from the beginning again. And that's what I'm going to do now. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here. Welcome to the joint committee on the arts informational hearing on Science, Technology, Arts and Math education, also known as STEAM. Thank you all for being here, especially our panelists, some of whom drove for hours or even flew in to join us today. Mike Fong didn't.

I saw him walk from across the street. So less of a thank you to you. The goal for this hearing is to highlight the A in STEAM. Traditionally, the arts and sciences have been thought of as entirely separate disciplines, but we know that's not true. Science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics are all advanced through creativity and curiosity, and each discipline has something to learn from the others.

Today, we will examine how California's classrooms, from elementary schools to our universities, are offering arts education alongside scientifically oriented subjects and what we can do to ensure art is fully integrated into STEAM hearing curriculums, not just as an afterthought. I am glad to be here, along with our vice chair, Senator Allen, who is a huge advocate for the arts and arts education. Thank you to Senator Allen and his staff for working with my staff to organize this hearing.

We have a lineup of incredibly impressive panelists, ranging from leadership from the Department of Education, a student advocate, professors, deans, and a corporate partner. Our panelists will paint a comprehensive picture of our exciting programs happening throughout the state, challenges in implementing and expanding those programs, and opportunities for collaboration at all levels of government, nonprofits, and private sector. Our panelists will also help us visualize the pipeline from Steam education to careers.

Before turning it over to our vice chair, I want to go over some rules for the hearing. Yeah, this is going to keep this crowd in line. We will have two panels, with each organization allotted ten minutes for their presentation. Please stay within your time limit. We have a sergeant here if you don't. After each organization presents, we will leave a few minutes for questions and answers. After our two panels conclude, we will provide opportunity for public comment for those who are here.

For the public comment portion, please note that each person will have two minutes for their remark. And also note that there's no vaccination bills on the agenda. All testimonies today will be in person, including public comments. Now I will hand it over to Senator Allen to say a few words.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Rendon. Appreciate it. I want to reiterate your lack of enthusiasm for Assembly Member Fong. Actually, no, but I'll say he's a lot better than all the rest of them. Because he's here. Because he's here. But I'm a big fan of yours, Mr. Fong, and I appreciate all the work you've done. You've been a great Member of this committee. In fact, when we did tours of the cultural districts around the state, you were one of the most consistent participants.

And I know you've been such a great champion for the arts and just appreciate your long standing commitment to this committee. Looking forward very much to working with our chair, our speaker emeritus. This is something that he specifically sought out, I think, a role that he wanted to take as he left the speakership because it's such a topic of interest and importance for him. I also want to just thank all the panelists for coming up, for taking their time up to be here. Very special shout out to Ed and Jason Crockett, who came all the way up from LA. I appreciate you guys for making the trip up from down south. This has been an area of real interest for me for so long.

I've been involved with this committee, Love the Arts for all education focus that we've had, cultural funding, advocating for our creative community, looking at artists as therapists in everything from a prison context, to helping veterans coming home from war, to artists as second responders after terrible disasters, and the type of really meaningful healing that they can bring to communities. So it's been such a privilege being a part of this committee for such a long period of time.

So this is our opportunity to just kind of writ large. This committee is all about making sure that there is a constant focus on the arts. We don't hear bills. We hear ideas, out of which many bills and proposals and policy changes come. Lots of really good things have come out of our hearings through the years.

Just to give you an example, we did a hearing on arts and education on Vapic appliance many years ago, out of which then we really started to focus on the fact that among many problems, we actually dropped the teaching credential for theater and dance teachers many years ago. Nobody quite knew why. They knew that CTA had always opposed making a change in the area, but we said, we got to reopen this issue.

And the arts teachers took to the floor of the CTA convention, went out and advocated for the Bill and convinced all their colleagues to change the organization's policy. And next thing you know, we've now reinstated the teaching credential for these really important arts subjects that were the only two topics that were in Ed Code delineated that didn't have a teaching credential associated. So that was really important.

Now people can actually get a credential in their own subject and not have to go the dance teachers had to go get a PE credential. Anyway, the point being this was something that came out of one of our hearings and we know that there's so many other examples. So I was on the school board myself and I was an education chair in the Senate before my current chairmanship. So education issues are immensely important to me as well.

I know what a difference a strong, steam classroom can make for kids. I've seen it both in the theory but also up close and personal in my own home school district, and I'm now seeing it in my own son's schooling. It's ultimately about creative collaboration and teamwork along with problem solving in a project focused learning environment, increasing engagement and curiosity about STEM companion subjects in addition to the arts. And it's all about making sure that kids stay engaged and in school.

And ultimately so many kids that don't interact with or relate to the traditional science curriculum, arts can connect with them in a different way and engage them in a different way and actually not only deepen their love and appreciation for the arts, but deepen their own sense of self within a school context and with science. Oftentimes we see science as such a kind of cold, hard subject and the arts being about the heart.

But there's so much interaction and we're going to be talking about it today. So looking forward to today's presentations and discussions and with that, love to see if our colleague Senator Fong has any comments.

Thank you so much, Chair Rendon and Senator Allen and to all the arts committee Members for the leadership and efforts here. Today's discussion to really look at the pipeline in higher education as well is something as a career catalyst in the higher education and career pipeline in the arts. And as a Senator, also served on the school board. I served on the Community College Board in Los Angeles.

And the work that was done there to promote the arts, we had the Vincent Price Art Museum on the campus of East LA College. And the work there that's happening to really make sure that we have embraced the arts and we have the arts as part of our K-12 curriculum or higher education curriculum and just really through all throughout California. And the status of arts education is so critical for the growth of our students. And so I look forward to today's presentations and today's discussion. And thank you so much again for the invitation.

It's been a while. Thank you, Senator. Thank you. Assembly Member thank you all for joining us. Let's get started with our first panel. Our first panelist is Mary Nicely, chief deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education. Ms. Nicely, thanks for joining us. Good to see you again.

Thank you. Should I sit here?

Yeah, please.

Hello.

Sound good? Thank you, Chair Rendon, Vice Chair Allen, and Member Fong for inviting me here and CDE here today for this really important conversation. Mary Nicely, Chief Deputy Superintendent here at the Department of Education representing State Superintendent Tony Thurman. And I was really excited to hear about this and the intersection of arts education and its connection to traditional STEM education.

As a former stage mom, who I thought my daughter, of course, was always better than everyone else's, and she is 35 now, but all of her videos are still up there, and I still post them every year for her birthday. Jesse, you were Annie when you were. In fourth grade, you were awesome. But my daughters were so I kind of miss being a stage mom, but. Now I can see these connections.

My daughters are programmers now, but on the side, chefs, food and art magazine editors, amateur farmers and knitters, crocheters crafters. And so I've seen the benefits of being able to have this arts education intertwined with being able to live at home with the mom and dad that are programmers. And you say, I never want to be a programmer.

It's like, yeah, you're going to be a programmer, but you're going to get to do this other stuff, too, and you're going to love it, and it's going to be really wonderful. And and so I always look at thinking about how throughout history, some of our greatest thinkers and our creators and our ventures were also amazing artists and scientists. And at some point in our education, that stopped being the thing. We started siloing off these subject areas when they used to be.

I know when I grew up intertwined, and at some point they were broken down into these silos where kids started getting tracked into what they might or might not be. So I see the A and STEAM bringing not only relevance to the why of these STEM fields, but the how, the critical thinking and the creativity that have to go into being successful. A successful engineer, a successful mathematician, a successful problem solver. So I'm really excited about that.

I will say that when I came to the Department of Education in 2019, after coming with the state superintendent, I was a little stunned to come to the Department and see that we didn't actually have a STEAM office or unit at all. It was a little shocking because we had chaired the Assembly Select Committee on STEAM, and we're doing a lot of work in that area, and I was very excited to be able to come and do that, and then it just wasn't there.

But we're really grateful to be on this panel because the CDEFoundation, thankfully, as partners, carried on the STEAM Symposium that has thousands of people who come every year to support from around the state and across the country and internationally. So it's a great partnership to have them there. So I'm really happy to be here and also to know that the art standards were written by.

Another one of our panelists who left pretty much maybe right around 2021 and has actually been successfully leading some of this. Arts from the field for us because we're kind of coming back into this world ourselves and really grateful that there have been investments by the Legislature for expanded learning, primarily in our career pathways, in our academies. So we've been able to continue on that way. But as Chair Rendon mentioned, it's not an afterthought, but it isn't necessarily integrated into the classroom every day.

And so we're really excited that Prop 28 has passed and we may have dedicated up to a billion dollars a year to be able to really go back to the way I grew up many, many decades ago where it was just a given. You picked up your violin or your piano or whatever and you started doing that in elementary school and all of us had to do that.

I was never a great dancer, so we're not going to talk about that, but I did play the violin, so that was wonderful. So currently what we do have at the Department of Education are our steam hubs, which are part of our expanded learning program. And so we do have 16 STEAM hubs across the state and they've been very intentional to include the arts in all of their programming. So we're really happy that at least that has been able to continue on.

And they're doing a lot of visual arts, they have academy, they take out the kids for weeks at a time for camp outs and are really trying to integrate so much of the arts into the math and science fields while they're out there environmental education. So trying to track all of these together. We also have a number of steam academies that are funded through the state as well. But again, that's not every kid and equitably, only a certain number of kids can get into these academies.

Only a certain number of these kids can be served by these 16 hubs that are across the state. And once again, also on the curriculum side of things, we are really excited. That what vice chair Allen mentioned, that 50 years, after almost 50 years, the credentials in dance and theater have been reinstated. So those are good things. I think we're heading in a great direction to be able to uplift the work and bring arts back into our mainstream.

Also we also know that the CDE Foundation is working on the residencies because we do know that there's going to be a massive shortage in teachers in this area and some credentialing challenges because most of our credentialing in the arts is in the upper grades and we do not have standards actually for the lower grades.

And so the credentialing is going to be a huge challenge for us moving forward and how to remove those barriers to bring in artists and just high quality teaching professionals into that area. So I'm going to hand it over to my partners here on the panel and I'm just excited to have Penelope who's also here and is one of our student advisors on our student advisory council. So I've just met her for the first time. So really excited to have some great partnerships to help us as we move into the arts world. Kind of back into that world at the Department of Education.

Great. Thank you. Before you do if you don't mind, we have Assembly Member Boerner here from San Diego County and thank you for the oreos.

I really appreciate our Speaker Emeratus and Chair of Joint Arts and Vice Chair of Joint Arts for Convening. This hearing. I think it's so important what arts education can do. I've seen it in my own kids. I got my start in politics as a PTA mom. So I really appreciate all the work you're doing and look forward to hearing more about what we could do as the Legislature to support the arts in California. Thank you.

Thank you. Should we continue? Do you have any questions for Ms. Nicely? I was a little curious about the sort of distinction between the hubs and the academies and sort of where they are geographically and the differences between the two and where they may.

There's. The academies are there's about four or five academies and then those are ones that are just particularly steam academies. They're mostly in Southern California to be honest with you. The 16 STEAM hubs are scattered across the country across the state of California and so they're throughout the counties. They're situated at the county offices but those are expanded learning. So those are like our after school programs. The academies themselves are full day actual schools. Public schools. Yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah. I don't know whether it makes maybe more sense to open up to the panel but I am interested in some of the opportunities that might exist with the passage of Prop 28. But maybe be best for us to hear from everybody and then kind of have a broader conversation because let's do that. I know we didn't want to focus specifically on that here today but obviously it's a big elephant in the room. The implementation is really important and it provides us with real opportunities. But I think there are also some concerns about how the rollout is going.

Cool. Let's do that. If a Member has to leave before they have an opportunity to ask their questions and just poke me I was looking over here but otherwise I think that's a great idea. Great. Continue with the presentations.

So I'm Ed Honowitz. I'm the CEO of the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation or the CDE Foundation. And first of all really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to talk about Steam, which is something that we are deeply involved with and want to certainly acknowledge our partnership with Superintendent Thurman, with Mary Nicely and the Department. The Cde Foundation is the fiscal manager of philanthropic funds that come to the Department of Education.

We also run a variety of programs internally, and you'll hear more about those momentarily. But we run the California Labor Management Initiative, working with school districts across the state to build partnerships between labor and management. We run the California Teacher Residency Lab, and my colleague, co Director of the lab, will speak to you here a little bit more in detail about that work, which is really exciting and important.

We also run the California Steam Symposium, which is the largest gathering of Stem Steam educators in the country, and that's put together in partnership with the Department of Education and the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. So we produced the STEAM symposium. It was originally the STEM Symposium, and we added the A, I don't know, five or six years ago, but it's been going on for eleven years.

It was really one of the first things that the foundation did in order to address a need that wasn't funded elsewhere, et cetera. So I want to start by just saying, please join us if you're able, or your staff, February 9 and 10th at the Long Beach Convention Center. And we will have I think you have some information in your packet there specific to the symposium and would love to do what we can to reach out to you around that program.

The theme of that symposium is you belong in STEAM, because we know that there's a lot of California students that don't feel like they belong in STEM or STEAM education. And so I want to kind of quickly address why Steam? What's this idea of STEMplus arts equals STEAM? The acronym of STEAM was really kind of spearheaded by John Maeda, who was a graphic designer, visual artist, computer scientist.

He was faculty at MIT, President of the Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently the Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft. So that kind of connection between art and technology is more than just on the surface. They're deep, deep connections, and I'll talk about that. Really appreciate this committee and the Members focusing on Steam, as you're probably aware, not only in California, but there's also a bipartisan Congressional STEAM Caucus with over 60 Members in Washington.

So what are some of the challenges around STEAM? Well, there's a lot of silos. I'm sure you've experienced this, being elected officials, and even surprisingly in education, there are silos in most high schools. The math Department isn't talking to the Science Department very often. I mean, there's all those kinds of things, but it's even harder when you start to add in the arts, right? So why add art to STEM, right?

And sometimes you hear folks in the traditional STEM fields, right, science, technology, engineering, and math talking about, like, why are we adding the arts? What does our work have to do with painting and marching band? But a way to make that easier, I think, for people to get that connection is to think of art as design. So I want to point you to a Art Center College of Design, the number one industrial design, product design, automotive design school in the US. Located here in California.

Also an almighty thank you. But I think it's important to understand that there's a deep, deep connection between technology, all of the STEM fields, and design and art. Is that a way of thinking about design? So let's talk for a second about design thinking. I guess look at it this way. Where would Apple, right, the largest company in the world, be without a huge focus on product design? I mean, people are fanatical about their Apple devices if they're an Apple user.

Steve Jobs said, design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. So we have an amazing opportunity with Prop 28, something that I think folks that have been in the arts are somehow trying to process, that this thing has actually happened after so many years of thinking in a scarcity mindset. And we really need to have a focus on connecting arts and STEM. So arts and STEM, it really makes STEM more accessible and relevant to students.

And I want to point out a couple of things in relation to that. If you look at PhDs that were awarded in the US. 47.9% went to white men, 25.7 went to white women, 2.2% went to black women. There's a big mismatch in terms of who our student population is versus those that are getting higher degrees. And we need to make Stem more accessible and culturally relevant. So there are ways to do that that are really exciting opportunities right now. Think about game design.

Think about esports. Esports, by the way, is now officially a CIF sport. So you can get a letter on your letter person's jacket, right for Esports, right for gaming. Great way to engage kids. And love to talk further with the committee staff about that at a certain point. But when you think about media design, video production, media, arts, I mean, currently arts and media are the most popular career tech ed pathways in California.

So it's a real opportunity to make that connection and make Stem more engaging and relevant. Just quickly. When you look at sort of the connection with jobs and skills and employment, whether you look at the World Economic Forum data or Mean, when you look at what employers want, top items, creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, analytical thinking, and innovation. I mean, that's the stuff of STEAM. It's what we need in the California economy to continue to be a leader in worldwide.

So I want to leave you with a couple of things before I turn it over to my colleague here. Saul Bass, who is probably one of the greatest graphic designers of the last hundred years, said, I think this in a really powerful way. Design is thinking made visual. And so we need to find ways to connect with our students, to connect industry and the arts, and to think about how design and technology are integrally related and incredibly important to the state of California.

So I hope you'll please join us at our STEAM symposium. I'd love to figure out how we feature a policy discussion on Arts and STEM. I think it's really important, and the thousands of educators coming would be well served to understand in a deeper way that connection. We don't have that connection as deep as we need it right now.

To that integration of the Arts and STEM, I want to say one of the big issues coming down the line is and Mary mentioned it around Prop 28 and the teacher shortage, which everybody's experiencing. So there's a real opportunity in there, and my colleague Jacquelyn Ollison is going to give you information specific to that in relation to one of our program areas, the California Teacher Residency Lab.

Thank you so much, Ed. And good afternoon, everyone. Jacquelyn Ollison, co-director of the California Teacher Residency Lab at the CDE Foundation. I just want to say that I belong at STEAM. I was a math teacher, and I got my math degree. And when I was growing up, I didn't see a lot of African-American female math teachers.

And so the ability to study that and to become a teacher and turn that around, it meant so much to me to have that representation, for me to be representative for students to know what they can do. And with that being said, we believe that California deserves a diverse, thriving teacher workforce that is well prepared and able to advance equity and justice and provide all the learning supports that every student reaches or every student needs to reach their full potential.

We're looking for teachers who will see the humanity in their students and see the potential that they have to be a part of STEAM. Now, before I move forward, I think I should just give a little brief synopsis of what is a teacher residency program? Well, it's a credential program that's built on a medical residency model. Teacher residencies provide an alternative pathway right? Let me see. They provide an alternative pathway to teacher certification that's grounded in deep clinical training.

So residents will apprentice alongside an expert teacher in a high needs classroom for a full academic year. They take closely linked coursework from a partnering university that leads to a credential and sometimes a master's degree. At the end of that residency year, they receive living stipends. And thanks to the Department of Ed and that push around and Superintendent Thurman and pushing for an increase in the stipends.

They're now able to get a $40,000 stipend as part of the residency program, which is huge when we're trying to recruit a diverse teacher workforce, right, because that funding really helps bring in more candidates of color, and then in exchange, they have to commit to teaching in the district for at least four years beyond the residency. Now, the interesting thing about that is they have four years.

They allow districts to hire teachers who understand the inner workings of their school district, and they're prepared to teach day one. Okay, so that's huge. Now, here's the thing about teacher residency grants in the state, right? They are an effective way to address the California teacher shortage and to diversify the workforce because they attract more teachers of color, produce teachers in high shortage fields. But these are the high shortage fields that it addresses currently.

Special education, bilingual education, Stem, computer science, transitional kindergarten or kindergarten, and recruiting, developing, supporting, or developing support systems for or providing outreach and communications and strategies to retain a diverse teacher workforce. Shorthand, you can give funding if your goal is to diversify the teacher workforce to fit your local needs. But there is also another possibility where, if this commission can look at the annual analysis of hiring and vacancy data, they can designate another shortage area in that respect.

So the thing I think would be important to note here is that when you have a program, like a residency program that is so effective at training teachers, it brings in more teachers of color and there's funding, and they are being apprenticed alongside a teacher or a seasoned teacher for a year. The opportunity here would be to see, can we use this type of model to get more arts teachers into the profession, right? So currently, right now, I'm just looking at the number 213.

I just did a quick analysis. Of the 213 CTC grants that were given out percentage wise, 46% were focusing on Stem and 54% were focusing on diversification of the teacher workforce. Computer Science 1%. Right. So we have some work to do to kind of bump up the steam, but there's nothing in there with regards to art, and that is becoming both the challenge and the opportunity, right, because it's not a designated shortage area as of yet. Right.

But we think with Prop 28 and all the teachers that we're going to need in a couple of years, if that were people could access this funding to develop this amazing model to train effective art teachers. But one way that they can do that now is through the diversification of the workforce designation.

So if the idea is to recruit and retain a diverse teacher workforce that represents California state population as well as local diversity, if those candidates that you're bringing in, they do fit that category, so to speak, but they also happen to be wanting to get a dance credential or a. Theater, credential or VAPA, it's possible to utilize the residency program to bring in more teachers.

And I would recommend that's something that we do, because after three to five years, after three to five years in the profession, residency programs have higher retention rates than your traditional intern programs or student teaching programs. And when I say higher retention rates, we're talking about generally ranging from 80% to 90% in the same district after three years and 70% to 80% after five years.

So when you're thinking about putting the A in STEAM, right, and trying to address this huge equity issue, if you don't have teachers or people who are there and present to make sure that students are developing that art, literacy that they need, the Stem skills that they need, the computer science literacy that they need. How can we then ensure that art becomes important in the education of our students? So I just wanted to share that with you.

So again, the challenge here and the opportunity is how might we use residency programs as a way to train an effective teacher workforce with a VAPA focus, knowing that VAPA is not currently a designated shortage area?

Thank you, Dr. Honowitz. And Dr. Ollison. Again. Dr. Hnowitz is the Ed Honowitz is the chief Executive officer, and Dr. Ollison is the co Director of the California Teacher Residency Lab. I know, Ed, you flew up from Southern California, so thanks for doing that. Next up, our next panelist is Penelope Oliver, who is only 17 years old but has already founded her own nonprofit to provide equitable access to arts education. Penelope is also a student voices advocate with Create California. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me and allowing student voice at the table. My name is Penelope Oliver. I'm a senior at Horizon Charter School at Sierra College, which allows me to be here today and do activism. All Access Arts aims to bridge the gap between the well provided with arts education and those who need it the most and aren't getting it in schools.

So we operate by doing community partnerships around the greater Sacramento area with shelters, community centers, Title One schools, and have art clubs completely grassroots, completely free. Actually brought some art today to show just how powerful the arts are. So we just wrapped up summer intensives at Wellspring Women's Center, which is a drop in women's center in Oak Park. And as you can see, when we're teaching Stem and when we're teaching arts, all of it is different.

And this allows kids to really express themselves on a personal statement. Having access to arts is a mental health resource. The arts help us grow, thrive, and heal. And oftentimes we come in and we see kids who haven't had access to any arts who are so happy to do just a simple activity like coloring, because that is the only arts education they're getting or that don't have crayons at home. And just it doesn't matter how good you are at the arts.

It's simply a pathway to expression and a student right. Putting the arts in STEAM allows students to think both creatively, but also analytically. And those together is how we create critical thinkers. The facts speak for themselves via Create California four times. Students who have an arts education are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement. They're four times more likely to receive a bachelor's degree. They're also 30% more inclined to pursue a professional career. Arts open doors.

And ultimately, the students in the California public education system today will be governing our state one day. So investing in arts and STEAM is investing in brighter futures. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. The last person of the first panel is Letty Kraus, Director of the statewide arts initiative with the California County Superintendents.

Good afternoon, committee Members. My name is Letty Kraus, as you noted, and I'm the Director of the California County Superintendent Statewide Arts Initiative. The Arts initiative works through the 58 county offices of education to connect with the 10,000 plus school districts and bring arts and ensure that all students in California have access to arts education. My background is in arts education, so today, and I've been invited to talk about K-12 arts education. And I'll be coming at it from an arts education point of view.

I am going to propose I'll just put this straight up front that I'm going to propose. If we're looking to put the A back in STEAM, we must ensure that the arts, just like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, are included in every student's core curriculum everywhere in the state. First, though, let's paint a picture of what Steam can look and sound like in a classroom.

Now, I would just want to note that I know that STEAM can be grounded in civics, environmental problems, health, or many other contexts. But I have chosen an example that I connect to, and it is based on what I learned from listening to Imagineers at Disneyland. So I'm just putting that out there. So, you know so the assignment of the classroom is theme park experience. And in our imagined classroom, students are designing a proposal for a new theme park experience. They're doing research. They're having discussion.

What will theme park guests see, hear, and feel to make the experience believable? What artwork, music, or other audio will we create to shape the experience? How will technology drive this? What are the technical and engineering needs for the architecture and mechanics of the experience? So, essentially, they're engaging in design thinking. Together, team Members will divide the tasks. They'll sketch, sculpt, paint, use computer graphic design programs. They'll build and test prototypes, write code, and create and record video and audio as they develop their project.

They're excited about this because they can exercise their creativity and apply the knowledge and skills they've learned in their other courses. And they can also engage in a real world problem. They're looking forward to presenting their work to the peers they have and their families and the community Members. So why are they prepared to succeed in this project? Well, that's because they've had a wellrounded educational experience that includes the arts as part of the core curriculum in elementary school.

They've also had integrated arts, science and math learning experiences that are designed by knowledgeable teachers who work together to ensure there are learning objectives for each content area, and all learning is advanced in each content area. So that's the picture I wanted to paint. And so, in essence, to sum up, those students have had access to regular standards based instruction within the school day for all of the STEAM content areas, including the arts.

Not only are they benefiting in the myriad ways that we at this hearing already know the arts benefit students, but they're also preparing for the future college career, civic life, and they're gaining skills and experiences that will help them to access opportunities in the creative economy workforce. So, again, if we're looking to put the A back in STEAM, well, then I'm going to be the broken record and say we must ensure that the arts are included in every student's core curriculum everywhere in the state.

So the good news is that thanks to recent statewide efforts among advocacy organizations, legislators, and voters who are committed to updating and expanding arts education in California, we are positioned to do that with modernized arts standards. And I didn't write them. I just led the committees that wrote them, committees of classroom experts. And I know also that Senator Allen was on the IQC when we did write our arts framework. So thank you for that. But we do have momentum.

And with Prop 28, boy, do we have momentum. So we can make all of the investment of the past seven years. It's only been seven years that we've made all of this progress, including the credential. And I am a former dance teacher with a supplementary authorization. I didn't have PE credential, but I had the authorization. So what the first thing they did was stick me in a PE class. And when I said what, they said, well, you know how you can teach dance?

So that's an aside. But I'm grateful for the credential to be back. So I just want to take a few more minutes to talk about the arts framework before I conclude. Again, since the topic of putting the A back in STEAM is essentially a proposal to focus on arts integration, which is that's what that is, I want to sort of provide a couple of key points about the Arts Framework chapter that deals with arts integration. So, first of all, there's the promise of arts integration.

Why is it great? Well, it's because in our classrooms, intentional and strategic arts integration can help students apply and connect and get engaged with what they're learning. When it is successful, student learning is transformed. It transcends the boundaries of the content, and it provides valuable learning and problem solving opportunities. Now, a cautionary note, though, we have to remember some issues that are important to the field. One of those is the fear that integrated learning, including an esteemed context, would replace specific arts instruction.

So we have to note that that's there, and we have to pay attention to that. We also have to be mindful of instruction that uses the arts to teach the content and therefore is not true. Arts integration, that's another issue that's out there. We also have to remember that content must be thoughtfully selected. And to be authentic, the goal must be clear are we learning or are we applying what we've learned? And the time is needed to do that to make those connections.

So I will just propose to you that the state adopted arts framework that we have provides guidance on all of this, along with specifics for each arts discipline. And it must be a primary resource for STEAM implementation. So I will conclude by saying that when we consider policy components and practices that support STEAM education, I'd like to bring your attention to three areas access and there's the broken record point about making sure that we have arts in every school, for every child, everywhere in the state.

Funding. We need to remember that it's not just Prop 28 that funds arts education. We need healthy programs that draw from multiple funding streams, and we need to help people keep the aye on the ball. About that. We need to provide successful funding models for large, small, and rural settings. We need to ensure we're providing funding for professional learning so that all teachers engaged in arts and Steam are properly equipped to do that.

And finally, if we're talking about statewide coordination and leadership to put the A back in Steam, state leadership should recognize and provide ongoing supports throughout the state for the continued efforts to implement the standards and framework. And if the state designates a leadership position or office for Steam, they should also do so for the arts. When I first came to CDE, we had a STEM office, and we also had an Arts leadership office. And so I would just end with that. And thank you very much for this opportunity to sit here with my esteemed colleagues and to talk to all of.

Thank you. Great panel questions from the Members.

Yeah, I totally hear you. Obviously, arts education existed long before Prop 28, but it was put together largely because there was a kind of a sense of inadequacy and a need, and I think also sense that the public really cared a great deal about it.

So I would love to, first of all, thank everybody for all the work that you do every day to make things better for our young people with regards to arts education and then do a bit of a deep dive into some of the issues. What sort of new opportunities exist. Both with the passage of the measure but also through other advocacy work, how the VAP esteem dynamic might work within the context of Prop 28.

And also ask Mary Too, who at CDE should the LEAs be contacting if they've got questions about what qualifies for Prop 28 funds and the current status of Prop 28 implementation. So let me throw all that out there.

Well, that's a good question. No, actually, at this point, it's living in our College and Career Transition division. Because that's the place where we have I'm sure you've had Pete Callas testify a number of times. It's living there right now, but that's.

Only because there's a career pathway for the arts and music and education. But there's only one person there, and she's really more of a career pathways person. So we do have our FAQs up. It's between our government affairs. I will get you, you can call me.

I don't really but it's kind of been living in Pete Callas's shop in career college transitions, but that's not where it should live. That just happens to be where it landed because there's one person who knows about arts media education there.

So what's the plan, then? We got to be ready, right? I'm already getting calls from school districts in my area saying, hey, what should we be doing to prepare for this funding? So what's the plan for implementation? What sort of resources and assistance are we giving to school districts as they're trying to navigate all this?

Right now? That's where it's living, and it's living at a Division Director level because we don't really have staff aside from that. So it's kind of being spread out. Between our Government Relations government Affairs Division. Who is working on the Prop 28. Legislation itself, our fiscal folks that are trying to get the money out.

And then we've got Pete Callas, who is our division Director, who's really trying to lead the charge on this. So it's almost by committee at this point at the department that we're trying to support this, but we just don't have, as Letty said, we don't have an arts person. We don't even have a STEM person at the Department. So it is by committee at this point. Hate to tell you that, but that's.

How we're trying to implement from a fiscal standpoint. And from at least the division Director that has one person who does career pathways. We've got a steam little work group, but that is made up of some of our people from expanded learning and our computer science coordinator. So at this point we have our FAQs up and right now Pete Callas is the one who is the one who has the email box and the phone number. And so everything is being directed to him.

And then we kind of fan out. Who can answer the different questions that come in. If it's fiscal, we send it over to our fiscal people. If it's an actual legislative question, we. Send it over to our legislative people. And if we're looking at some sort of programming support, we send it over to Pete around the arts.

Okay, maybe I can send this over to you. What are you hearing from your superintendents on this? Is there work underway with School Board Association and AXA and the county superintendents to try to create an infrastructure to make this implementation successful?

Yes. So one thing that we're doing is. We did get a little extra money from the person that funds the arts initiative or the organization. And in our eleven service regions we have provided boot camp events where we invite teams from districts to come and plan around what we do know about Proposition 28.

And one of the things that we're encouraging everyone to do is do their baseline, look at what do we have, look at the opportunities for growth and plan for how funding can be used. So we are working a lot with our arts leads in the regions to ensure that we're offering places and time and support to also I work closely with Create California and we're also talking with AXA and we're working together to develop a toolkit around implementation. But one of the conditions of that is that it must align with CDE guidance.

So we are trying to stay in tune with that and do what we can while we wait for things to settle. Mostly the superintendents are concerned. First of all, they're supporters of the arts. That's why we have an arts initiative separate from anything else in the organization.

And they're really concerned about the rural end of things, the small end of things. Half of our counties have under 30,000 students. There's a lot more places like Los Angeles County can really take off because they have a very robust ecosystem for the arts anyway. But then you have all these rural and small places that don't have those resources. So there's a lot of concern about, well, if we don't know the rules, then we don't want to get out there. We want to wait, but we can't really wait. We're supposed to start.

And so we do worry that there's a chilling effect to happen and ultimately what could happen in those places is that they give the money back. So we don't want that to happen. So I think the concerns really are around the lack of guidance but I think there's also widespread recognition that the proposition itself left a lot of things in a place where they're maybe not so clear to interpret and therefore that's why there's caution, I would say, with CDE and there's also caution with the superintendents.

Senator, let me give you the and. There is the email address, the Prop. 28 at CDE.CA.gov So if there are people who we're taking in comments, we're taking in emails. And so I just wanted to make sure you had that that was on. The record as well.

Thank you.

As the email address that is available.

Do you have a sense of when we're going to be able to provide our LEAs and superintendents with the kind of guidance that lady's talking about? I totally understand that the time frame set up in the proposition was probably too ambitious given the way that the bureaucracy works.

That being said, it is what it is and we've got all these folks that are on the ground who have responsibilities now under Prop 28 and they're chomping at the bit to provide all the new opportunities that they could provide.

Yeah, and I think the guidance is not far off because we are talking. To Create California now, we are talkin to AXA, we're coming together and the toolkit is coming through. So I think the issue was who's in charge? That is kind of where we're at, who was in charge and now we are starting to zero in on something. I will get you back where we are on the guidance but I know we're working on it and I think we just finalized a couple of the questions and they might be either in I think we needed some language around the supplement.

Supplant was one of the biggest questions that we had. Right. And that had to be figured out because that was the biggest question we were getting from the field for months and months. And so since that has been answered, I think we can start moving forward. But that was a big uncertainty that was impacting even the guidance that we could put out. So we'll definitely be getting back to you on that.

Yeah, vitally important. I don't mean to exclude everyone else from any thoughts on this process. Obviously, I think if anything, the overwhelming support for the measure really does underscore how much our fellow Californians believe in and really want to invest in this space. I mean, everything that everyone said in their presentations I think resonate with the General public. Certainly do. It does with yeah, I happen to.

Be a board Member of Create California which is an arts group that is deeply engaged in this and I would just say I'm encouraged that there's some good conversation happening with folks on the ground. Right. Those people that are charged with implementation, including their representative association, so AXA and other CTA. The idea is the Department needs to get informed via hearing what are the issues of the folks actually charged with implementation.

So we're still at Create California, also put out an FAQ. working directly with the Department to try and clarify and make sure that what's coming out is consistent and clear to people on the ground. But there's a lot of complicated issues around base-level funding and the waivers and a whole set of things. So again, the encouraging part is all the folks are actually think meaningful discussion about how do we problem solve and sort through it.

Thank you. So.

Much.

Any other questions? Great. I just had sake of pitting one panelist against another. Ms. Kraus's comment about incorporating Arts into the core curriculum. Just wondering if Ms. Nicely had thoughts on mean.

I don't think I'd have any question. Personally, I don't have any issue with that at all. I think it will be a matter of once again, I think we have our framework and we have lots of frameworks. We have great frameworks that sit there on the shelves. And I think this is the time where we just have to lift up the work, the good work that has been done over the years and continue to get that out there.

And that is where I think as a Department, communications wise, we could be a lot better at that and we should be working with our partners in the counties and within the LEAs to push that out. And we're working more and more towards that because these are great frameworks that have been in place. And so I don't see it.

I don't know where we are in any kind of a cycle with even any curriculum in that area.

Yeah. Based on what I see happening in the world, I think our frameworks are what they are for quite a while, but they're all updated, so that's the good news. And they address everything in the world, in the world.

But we have to have people use them and we have to lift them up and use them as models. And that is something that I think we just have to be better at. And so I don't disagree. We're not going to fight. We're good. No, I think we're in great.

I do think the science framework does contain an access and equity chapter that references Steam quite a bit. So just note that and then, yes, the frameworks, I'm a little biased because I worked in that office. I'm sorry.

But when she left, she took it all with her. She was the only one. Goodbye, Letty. And I think that's where we end up. We create frameworks, we work on these things, we make these great products, and then we don't really have any capacity to do anything afterwards, unfortunately, which is a huge challenge for us. We just have to move on to the next framework and the next curriculum. But I have absolutely no issue at all with ensuring that we have arts as part of our core curriculum. I think it's a fantastic thing.

Great. Fantastic. Thank you so much to our first group of panelists. Really appreciate great discussion and fine points and thanks for being here.

Thank you.

Now I'm going to move on to our second panel focusing on higher education to career pathways. We're going to start with two professors from Sacramento City College who run the Makerspace Program on their respective campuses. Tom Cappelletti is the Project Director and Faculty Coordinator, and Pamela Posz is the librarian and professor. Ms.Posz is Paul Mason's granddaughter. The very same Paul Mason who wrote the Mason's Manual of Legislative Procedure, which is a bit of a Bible in some legislative arenas. So thank you. Thank you Mr. Cappelletti and Ms. Posz for joining us. Please begin.

Hi everybody. Thanks for having us. By the way, the very first thing I want to do is invite you to the Sacramento City College Makerspace. We're only two and a half miles away and we would love to host you and all the panelists if you want to come maybe early next year. I had mentioned it to Annie to see a makerspace in action at a community college.

Looking at the agenda, it's interesting how it starts at community college, goes to State and then goes to UC, and it's like, I'm glad to say I'm a product of all that. I grew up in Napa, I went to Napa Valley College, I dabbled at Sac State, and I ended up and graduated at UCLA in product design. And so I'm a product of steam my entire life and public education and it's been fantastic.

UCLA at the time, it wasn't the art center, but it had a fantastic product design and industrial design art program, merged with the arts. This was in the 1980s and we got to see design labs, metal labs, wood shops, all fantastic instructors that all worked in the industry. The people that worked at Charles and Ray Eames office were our instructors. And I was immersed in design thinking. Iterative thinking 40 years ago. And I thought what? This is fantastic. Then I took off.

I went to work in the film industry, I had a stint in the US Coast Guard, I worked in the fashion industry, all in California. Well, the Coast Guard was all over. But then I ended up at Apple as a trainer teaching creative products to educators. And so my whole life has been this kind of steam composition. And 17 years ago I started at Sac City and as just an adjunct professor and it changed my life. We are the front lines.

So we're here today reporting from the front lines. I've taught over 5000 students in 17 years. And the Makerspace came about five years ago from an initiative from the state chancellor's office, the community college chancellor's office. There was a visionary vice chancellor there, Van. I always mess her name up, Van Ton-Quinlivan She split away $20 million to grant community colleges the opportunity to build a Makerspace. And I'll go into a bit about that.

It was a competitive process and 20 community colleges around the state were given two years of funding to do that. And we were lucky enough to get it. And then they said, you're on your own. My college had great administrators and decided to use strong workforce program funding to continue our maker space. So what is a makerspace? So it's basically a place that provides tools, technology, and knowledge for learners and entrepreneurs.

It results in prototyping learning new skills, basically modern wood shop, modern CNC, manufacturing digital tools. And it supports pathways to all kinds of jobs, creative jobs, technical jobs, manufacturing jobs. And I've seen in the last five years it's been five years, and some of that's been with COVID I have seen lives being changed. Students come in, not sure what they want, and they're in this warm, loving hub with artists, with people, volunteers from the community, and they get mentored the old fashioned way.

And then we find them pathways to higher ed, some of them. Some of them want to go straight to industry. And there's so many mom-and-pop manufacturing companies, and folks are starting their own Etsy shops and going to fairs and making money and doing side hustles. It's been the most eye-opening thing I've seen, and that's just been in the last five years. So community colleges, too, are sometimes the only place for young people after they finish their compulsory education.

It's a place for them to figure out what they want to do. And so we want to provide them with this kind of non-classroom place where they can come everything's free, they can go deep or they can just learn a few skills and then hopefully stick around. And so I've seen it happen in person. Pam too will talk about it. So I think you can tell I'm all about Makerspaces because they are steam in action.

And I just think I'll leave you with this and hand it over to Pam. I toured UC Berkeley's Makerspace. It's the Jacobs Institute. That one maker space has more funding at $30 million than all the community college Makerspaces combined. One, and I was lucky enough to go to UCLA. It just shows you the inequity of it. Going to UC is amazing, but it's a small percentage of our young folks, so I'm all about equity and access and inclusion, and I think putting these in community colleges is essential. Pam.

Hi, thank you so much for having us. We were so excited to be invited and talking about art, and especially bringing art into more mainstream education. Personally, I majored in art anthropology because my parents wanted me to do something more academic. That's why I majored in anthropology. The art was what I particularly wanted to do, so they really wanted me to get a safe degree. However, through my career, my art degree has definitely benefited me more than I use it all.

I mean, just in ways that you can't imagine. Like, I work in a library. We talk about redesigning the space, like what color is the carpeting, things like that. All that is really critical. I've been working in a variety of library settings for a long time. Library of Congress, State Law Library, Sac State, UC Davis I've been working at City College for 25 years. I have continued my art practice, my entire life.

But I started my craft and design business in 1997 and I now have four Etsy shops. So I'm just going to talk about things that I have either noticed that are important, I think, or experienced myself. So I graduated UC Davis. Great art school. My only criticism is they taught me nothing about how to actually make a living as an artist and I am passionate.

This is one of the reasons why I love the Makerspace about enabling creatives to make a living as a creative person, not having to do it as a side hustle, because the world would be so much better for so many reasons. And if I'd had access to a Makerspace when I graduated from Davis, I may have become an artist full-time instead of going into a librarian, which has been great and everything. Still, art is so important, and just generally artists should be valued more.

We just see the world in different ways. We can help people visualize process things and really practical things. There was some sort of experiment in science where they were figuring out how to fold proteins online and they had people it was a crowdsourced project. The artists were much better at figuring out how to fold the proteins than the science people because visual thinkers and like doctors benefit from improv training, for example. There are all sorts of ways that really help.

I know that sports are important and valued, but for some of us, higher quality of life relates to a vibrant art scene. For example, I am much more likely to care about going to the Crocker Museum or Mosac, which is the local science museum, than I am to attend a King's game. The arts and crafts community is a multi-billion dollar industry. However, there doesn't seem to be a lot of centralization and centralized support because it's mostly made up of individuals and very small businesses.

One part of the economy that demonstrates this is craft markets. The people selling at craft markets are predominantly women. Often they can't hold down a regular job because of issues such as childcare or lack of higher education. But they are trying to supplement their family's education and these are the same issues that often make them people more likely to be prayed upon by MLM Multi-level marketing because they don't have an ability to make a living and they get sucked into that.

Small business grants would be a great way to support art entrepreneurs. There are just a few basic art items that make it easier for people to start selling. But Makerspaces are just really such a great way to support local arts community. Although there are for-profit maker spaces, the best model really to reach the most people is to put them in pre existing institutions such as public libraries, schools, colleges and universities.

This provides the greatest opportunities for those who need them most, such as those individuals on the lower income part of the economic ladder. Public libraries and community colleges are really some of the best options because the populations we serve, like public libraries, are already in the neighborhoods where you would want to Makerspace anyway, and they exist in that. Whereas the for-profit model, the people who need it most are the people who can't afford the fee to pay for profit.

The K-12 system. As a librarian, I'm going to throw this in. Libraries are drastically underfunded. It's a huge issue for so many reasons. And just as suggestions, if you funded maker spaces and school libraries, that would help both libraries and schools. And also, don't take away the jobs that school librarians need to do, like critical thinking, everything like that, but add it as an option for them.

And then we need increased support for non-transfer options in the community college system because there's been such a focus on transfer. Let's see. And then we need money to market and promote Makerspaces and get the word out about what we so. And then we've been working to help Makerspaces organize in order to share information resources. I founded the NorCal Makers Guild, and we've been working with an organization in Ohio, Makertown, that provides structure, support, and an app for local makers.

Consumers like to stay and shop. Local Makertown supports that in Ohio. We need economic support to make this happen here and other areas around California. And then finally, again, we would love to invite you and everyone here to come visit the Makerspace at City College because there's nothing like seeing it in action.

Thank you both very much. Our next panelist row from San Francisco State to share with us the innovative programs happening on their campus. Dr. Cynthia Freeman Grutzik is the Dean of the Graduates College of Education at San Francisco State University. And Dr. Carmen Domingo is the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at San Francisco State as well. Thank you both for joining us.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Speaker Emeritus Rendon, Senator Allen and Assemblymember Boerner. Thank you so much for having us here. Happy to be here. From San Francisco State. I'm Cynthia Grutzik. I'm the Dean of the Graduate College of Education, and I'll let my colleague introduce herself in a moment. We're going to be making four points and leaving you with some takeaways. But I can tell already that what we're talking about ties together a lot of the things that you've heard from previous panelists. So this is great.

We're here to give you some really concrete examples of how we integrate arts and sciences and also career pathways at San Francisco State. So you want to introduce yourself, and then we'll talk about our colleges.

Yeah. So I'm Carmen Domingo and I am the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering. My background is as a cell and molecular biologist, and I did my PhD at Berkeley. So I know that Makerspace is really that's great. Yeah. So I serve we have about over 7000 majors in six different departments that span from biology to psychology, as well as two schools, a School of Engineering and a School of the Environment.

And the Graduate College of Education has about 1200 students. In our college. We have eleven credential programs. So all the ones you could imagine that stand the needs in our K-12 system and soon the PK Three Credential, which we're very excited about.

So, as you've all heard, STEAM is an approach to teaching science, technology, engineering and math that integrates intentionally the arts as a way to learn and explore and demonstrate knowledge across disciplines in a very holistic way.

I think it's great that we are both here together as deans from Collaborative Colleges because we take this very seriously in our college. We've just started an arts integration initiative. It's donor-funded at this point, but it's faculty with time to actually work with other faculty in the secondary Ed Department to integrate the arts into every subject area. And we've brought on board working artists to help with some programming in the college to just make visible the arts as an important factor in every credential program.

These are the future teachers who are going to be out in the high schools. So for them to leave us with this clear concept that this integration must happen is really important to us.

So, an example in the College of Science and Engineering are our field stations. We have the only field station in the San Francisco Bay, and we also have a field station up in the Sierras. And this is a place where we do nature-based learning, where students can observe the natural world and integrate it into their creativity, problem-solving, and solution-building, especially in the context of sea level rise, wildfires, and many other concerns that we have about our state.

And importantly, for many students that are from urban settings, they've never been in nature. And so, using that as a place to instill learning and appreciation for our spaces in California and the creativity, it's a natural place to integrate art.

We want to give you a couple more examples of how we integrate across our colleges. One is that the center for Science and Math Education, which lives in Dean Domingo's College, but which we also share, is a collaboration that recruits science and math teachers. We have the teacher fellows program. It's the NSF funded Noise Grants, STEM House for elementary teachers, math circles for community students. And eventually we hope to integrate our Arts Integration Center into this framework as well. And I'll pass it to you.

So the important part is really reducing silos. That's always an impediment in higher education. And so one example that we have is our Climate Change Certificate program, where students can come in with an interest in climate change and build it across all disciplines regardless of their major. So it allows students to take art classes, science classes, policy classes, social justice classes, all around a theme. So another important part is learning spaces. And we heard a really impassioned about maker spaces.

And so we also have a new science building. It's the first science building on our campus in 50 years. I know this gave us an opportunity to really reflect on what was important in the way that we teach science. So we have a Makerspace, a garage space, but importantly, art influences the way we teach science. So we have a chemistry studio style instruction. So typically, if most of you have taken chemistry, you'll have the lecture and then the lab component.

Now, who's thought of teaching art, where you get a lecture on art and then you do the art? That makes no sense. So the way that we can now teach chemistry in this new space is that you hear a little bit about the chemistry and then you get to do the experiment and then you get to hear a little bit. So it is integrated and so it is a new way of teaching chemistry that's impactful, and it's going to help retain students in the sciences. So we learn from the arts as well.

We want to highlight a few challenges and ideas for integration and collaboration in Steam, and I think some have been mentioned already, so that was interesting to hear. One is that one of the challenges that we've heard already about is around resources for implementation. There's been really unprecedented funding from the state around teacher preparation in the form of residency grants, paraprofessional grants, many other things, and we really welcome those. And we note that the funding goes directly to the LEAs, the local education agencies.

Yet partnerships are really required for those things to work, and finding the funding for the operation of it, the coordination of things, the partnership work is what's a challenge. So this is something that we work on with our partners, for sure. I'm glad to hear the conversation around Prop 28 because we in teacher education world have been watching that closely. It's wonderful to see that come down to the schools and the school districts and the counties. We're worried about arts teachers in our college for sure.

I read a report, and I think it's been referred to here, that they anticipate needing maybe 15,000 new art teachers. And we currently have about 5000 in practice right now. So how do we prepare those arts teachers across all of the areas of the arts? Where's the people time that it takes to develop those programs? That's what concerns me, where I sit as dean of a college of education.

We've already had local districts reaching out to us, asking us how to do this together, and we're eager to work with them. But the funding and the challenge of implementing those wonderful initiatives is what we're working on.

I'm going to give another example and it's around the Computer Science Supplementary Authorization. So San Francisco State is the lead for Northern California computer science authorization. And that was authored by AB 130, Section 143. It requires 100% cost match of funding, which is a barrier, especially for economically challenged school systems. So although San Francisco State would like to train more teachers in how to teach computer science, many of the teachers don't have the resources to actually participate in this program.

And we've actually went out and got significant funding from NSF, the National Science Foundation, to help us do this good work. And I can't get the funding for the teachers to be able to participate in it.

So I guess the idea around these resources is that if there would be something like an Arts Integration grant program that that would allow not just LEAs but also IHEs to apply for funding that would help us do some of the implementation, the people time around coordinating these important initiatives.

So STEM programs and industry haven't reflect the demographics of California and we need to do a better job to make sure that the career pipeline reflects our new generation of people. And as a Latina, this is something that really resonates and is important to me. So I wanted to just provide an example where San Francisco State has a very strong partnership with Genentech, which is a big biotech company.

And what's really unique about this partnership is that Genentech recognized that they wanted to invest in students that lived in their neighborhoods, not across the country in their neighborhoods that have not traditionally had access to STEM training. And so we need to encourage more sort of local investment in communities that haven't had access to this type of training and recognize that it is an economic benefit to the region.

And I think when we were talking actually, Carmen, I want to add that our industry partners recognize the importance of Steam and are very enthusiastic about this kind of integration because they are looking for people to work in their companies that really get it about how to think with design thinking and that aren't just focused in one direction. So we want to leave you with some takeaways, keeping an eye on the clock because we want to leave room for our fellow speakers. Four takeaways.

One is collaboration really is at the heart of STEAM collaboration across colleges, across institutions, between IHEs and K-12 resources for that kind of collaboration are really important all the way through.

And that partners need to create and sustain effective partnerships. That we really need the funding commitment across K-12 community college and comprehensive, if you like, CSU system. And that learning spaces really matter, that if we want to be innovative in how we teach and influence our students, we need to invest in the learning spaces that we have.

And then finally, as we said, these investments are so important, especially when we're working with students who've historically been left out of these opportunities. Creativity and innovation comes from different cultures and lived experiences and perspectives. And so this is what we are determined to bring along in our programs at San Francisco State and we're happy to share more information about that with you. Thank you.

Thank you both very much. Our next panelist, Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu is the Dean of the Arts of the Arts, a distinguished professor of Film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her most recent award-winning films are distributed by Women Making Movies and her newest book is forthcoming from Duke University Press. Thank you for coming all the way from Santa Cruz.

Yes. Greetings to all of you. A special recognition to my niece who ran here from her class at Sac City.

And also is that banana slug yellow?

Yes. This is a representation and a special recognition to all the banana slugs enjoying the live stream from the most beautiful campus on earth overlooking the Pacific on the bluffs of the redwood forest. This is how the University of California and particularly the Arts division at UC Santa Cruz puts the A in steam. If steam were a room, don't put arts in the corner.

I referenced the famous line don't put baby in the corner from the classic 80s film Dirty Dancing because you immediately understand what I mean. That art should not be derivative to STEM. Art powerfully employs emotion and reason both to create common understanding and to communicate seemingly so easily. Art gives context and meaning to graphs, statistics, metrics, algorithms enabling us to grapple with the unpredictability of life itself. Art expresses what five-paragraph essays cannot.

Painting shows the limits of lined notebooks when its expression truly requires large blank canvases. Music show us that we don't yet know how to hear until we hear sounds that make us feel our body anew, experiencing our feet, doing surprising things. Films reveal emotions we did not know existed when unleashing in us different kinds of tears from laughing or weeping. Whereas science predicts and hypothesizes. Art is at home with ambiguity, at times more comfortable with the questions than the answers.

Articulating the unanticipated and making real worlds that don't yet exist. I will show you how placing all of the STEAM letters on equal footing gives us our best chances at solving our collective crises today and what the UC does to make it happen. At UC Santa Cruz, scientists and artists work brilliantly together as we recognize and respect each other's forms of knowledge. Scientists and artists are better together when we come in harmony within the UC system.

The Institute of Arts and Science IAS our first climate controlled and collecting gallery at UC Santa Cruz. Converges arts and sciences without hierarchizing discipline. Producing exhibitions and programs on the west side of our city bridging town and gown with free access busing in K-12 students from our region and providing paid internships to high school and college students alike. The California Legislature propels the IAS work with its California climate Action Grant.

Executive Director Rachel Nelson's and Aesthetics of Resilience collaborates with the Friedlander Lab to study the impacts of environmental change on marine animals to advance social change through the arts. Come visit and see how we do it. The state legislature's funding of the center for Coastal Climate Resilience catalyzes powerful art and science projects such as our Games professor Misha Cardenas, who creates 3D printed and augmented reality interactive sculptures as she pipes in science fiction short stories so that we could imagine possible climate futures.

Art professor Jennifer Parker's Climate Action Lab works with our Seymour Marine Discovery Center to generate art, science and technology responses to communities climate vulnerability. I know you want to experience all of these. Funded by the California Arts Council, the center for the Force Majeure, directed by Josh Harrison, facilitates collaborations with tribal Members, artists and scientists in Nevada and Placer counties, focusing on plants important to Washoe culture bearers for whom forced removal from traditional gathering grounds decimates their access.

These projects evidence how STEAM responds to the critical issues of our time and centers, communities most vulnerable to climate change. So please continue to bolster state and federal funding of the arts. The arts need resources. Arts, in its seriousness, significance and substance, does not happen without funding. As the leader of the Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz, I refute the narrative that art equals poverty. STEM should not be the single path to how we define success attributing all career paths.

There, art needs resources to put our students on the same career footing. Let us together affirm our students decision to honor their voices and visions in pursuing the arts. Help us enable opportunities. Join me in refusing a false divide in our disciplines to empower our students. By advocating for our art students, we ensure achieving true excellence with equity innovating through inclusion. I share with you now what we are doing with students at UC Santa Cruz Arts Division.

Our Arts Professional Pathways Program APP brings industry and independent art together to show the infinity of possibilities in careers that exist and do not yet exist. At our annual Find Your Path event, hundreds of undergraduates and graduate students participate in workshops with creative industry professionals and development support staff who help them with resume writing, networking, thank you letters, and skills building in interviews.

Please connect with us with companies who value STEAM and care about a talented and diverse workforce to instill our students with hope as they complete their education. They are most vulnerable to dropping out at the upper division level when careers do not appear on the horizon and housing is hard to find. Every summer, my office funds internship scholarships for students to support basic needs and living expenses while doing unpaid or low-paid internships. Opening the door to professionalization and mentorship.

My Arts Dean's Fund for Excellence and Equity supports completion and dissemination of student research. The University of the Future Now grants invite students to identify what should constitute knowledge and practice in the 21st century to help them claim their education with the new demographics of our state. These efforts are currently funded by my own startup Funds as Dean, which runs out this June 2024. It will continue through private donations from alumni and our Advocacy Council. So please help us, partner with us, and change lives.

If not, you introduce us to those who can help. Arts Bridge, a UC-wide program, places students in the K-12 public schools in our local community to teach for ten weeks. They are paid through a grant from the UC Office of the President, which lasts until 2025. So we need your help in this inspiring, life-changing project before that money runs out. Our Dean's Student Leadership Board grows.

Arts administrators and policymakers and legislators trained in the arts, developing leadership skills and building community in the arts along the way. They are right now, ready to intern for you. As research repeatedly shows, art is better when all have access to it. Similarly, STEAM is better when all forms and methods of knowledge are recognized as needed.

We install these interdisciplinary student success programs because we believe that everyone, in all our dazzling diversity, should have a place at the table so that our state may have its best hope for resolving our most critical issues today. Our students, like Saul Viegas, deserve the good things that we can enable. His breathtaking work illustrates the beauty of specimens in our world empowering sciences with aesthetics in the QR code he created for this presentation, which includes all of the programs I describe today.

So in closing, to go on with STEM and not STEAM is to exclude the divergence and diversity with consequences we cannot afford. Let us not squash artistic impulses and desires. Let us remember our own need to go to the theater, to experience dance, to feel movies, and immerse ourselves in concerts. We read criticism, theory, and history about art because it helps us understand what binds us together today and what kind of art is possible and needed now.

Our kids see us enjoy art practice and research as essential to our lives. The Pandemic surely proved art as necessary to our survival. Research shows reading fiction increases empathy. An intimate act of connecting with an author ripples throughout society in how we learn how to treat each other to center art within STEM, STEAM A is right in the middle, exposes us to the subjectivities of ourselves and others to better our relationships.

We create exclusion if we only pursue STEAM and create inclusion if we pursue STEAM. Our students are distressed, anxious, and depressed when they want, with all of their hearts, to incorporate the arts into their lives. The hammering by their parents and by society that says arts will equal your poverty deprives us of resources in the arts and sends a message that we need to undo. Let us create the conditions for art to equal abundance. Thank you.

Thank you, Dean Shimizu. And we did get copies of the QR code, and we'll make sure that the Members of this committee who aren't here today get those as well.

Our. Lost. There we are. Our last panelist apologies is Jasson Crockett, Public Policy Manager with Snap Inc. Which is the parent company of Snapchat. Thank you for being here today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Felt like that last presentation was art in and of itself. I could listen to you all day. I hope you're narrating your own book. I'd like to first extend my thanks to the committee Chair and Speaker Emeritus Rendon and Vice Chair, Senator Allen, for having me today. My name is Jasson Crockett, and I represent Snap, Inc. The parent company of Snapchat based in Santa Monica, California.

It really is an honor and a pleasure to be here with you all today to speak to the committee's hearing on the importance of arts and STEAM. For those who don't know, Snap is a technology company. We employ just over 5300 people worldwide, 2200 here in the state of California, and many assume that we're heavier in the STEM. But that would be wrong. Our flagship product, Snapchat, is a communication platform with over 750,000,000 monthly average users worldwide.

We continue to advance ways for people to communicate using visual messaging. We are not social media. Rather, we are focused on building space for people to share their authentic selves and experiences with real-life friends in fun, immersive, and creative ways. At Snap, creativity is the cornerstone of everything we do. In fact, it's one of our core values. We are kind, smart, and creative.

For many, we know that introduction to the arts is a necessary and critical driver to help develop creativity throughout the entirety of a person's life. But especially at a young age, our success as a company is predicated on so much more than coders and computer science engineers. We rely on creative minds that can help us to shape that which is not yet realized and help us to imagine that which does not yet exist.

And we do not just rely on such talent, but we are committed to helping build the pool of that talent. That's why back in 2018, we launched Snap Academies, a pre-internship summer experience solely for community college students. We believe that talent is distributed evenly, and yet so often, our young, diverse, and incredibly creative community college students have difficulty breaking into careers in tech fields.

Students as part of Snap Academies are placed in one of four tracks for eight to ten weeks, earn a stipend, and receive mentorship from Snap employees. The programs include engineering, storytelling, design, and augmented reality. While engineering is fairly traditional, the design and storytelling programs are heavily rooted in artistic education, helping Academy participants learn what it means to integrate artistry in a digital space, whether it's building immersive digital experiences or building a captivating narrative.

We are now reaching a place, I'm excited to say, where Academy graduates have gotten internships and even jobs with Snap, and several have gone on to start their own business. Just this past week, we launched a partnership with the city of El Segundo to create several augmented reality experiences and complement their public art exhibits. The city hired a graduate of Snap Academy's AR program to build the augmented reality activations, and it was a really exciting moment to witness.

While the Snapchat app is what Snap may be best known for today, our big bet is on the future of augmented reality. Indeed, Snap is already the leader in augmented reality technology, layering digital experiences over the real world. We see AR as an optimistic vision for how technology can be used as a tool to enhance our real world experiences rather than escape from the real world altogether. In the most fundamental sense, much of augmented reality is a marriage of art and technology.

In these early days, we have sought to bring AR to communities to help socialize the technology, and to do that, we turn to the arts as our key ambassador. One of our most ambitious projects is a partnership with the LA County Museum of Arts. A project called Monumental Perspectives. Over the past three years, we have worked with LACMA to pair artists from throughout LA County

With augmented reality developers to create digital monuments in Snapchat that pay homage to people, places, movements and events that have been instrumental in shaping LA but are oftentimes overlooked by textbooks and have failed to be memorialized in bronze or stone. As we continue to create more data points on the intersection of art and technology, we have sought opportunities to inform broader discussions on the importance of art.

At the start of this year, we began meeting with the California Department of Education's Arts, Media, and Entertainment team to provide insight on their 2023 industry recommendations and guidance for model programs and advanced training. This is a brilliant initiative that seeks to better incorporate industry skill set needs in recommended best practices for public secondary schools across the state. While the technical skills are absolutely crucial, exposure to the arts is just as important and just as prominent of the recommendations.

But to increase our exposure, we know schools need resources. That is why Snap was proud to support California Proposition 28 dedicating funds to arts and music and public education. Italian painter Gino Severini once said, Art is nothing but humanized science. Snap has sought to merge technology and artistic creativity to enable more immersive ways for humans to experience themselves and experience the world around them.

It is paramount to our future as a business that this state continues to not just support, but uplift and celebrate the arts so that all may find ways to embrace their value and continue to apply the discipline to advance all fields. And Snap will continue to be a partner in that effort. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Crockett, question.

Questions for our panelists?

Well, thank you. So many great ideas. I want to take everyone up on all the tour opportunities. Field trip, field trip. First of all, I'm excited about getting the chance to go check out the Makerspace. It's interesting--even at my kids elementary school day, we're talking about creating a Makerspace. Could you give me the two-sentence description of what a Makerspace is?

Yeah. It's a place for folks to come together and make things. And it can be in a shoebox. It can be in a $35 million lab, but it's all about project based learning, collaborative learning, and mentors to show you how to make stuff.

It's an educational tool as opposed to a co-working?

Yeah, in our case, it's strictly educational and also encouraging people to strike out for careers and entrepreneurship, things like that. So the whole idea is: we provide the tools and the training, and in a very no-prereq access point, we teach courses, but we also just have free workshops for anybody that wants to come in, and we advertise them. So we'll do everything from teaching introductory sewing to advanced milling and manufacturing with CAD/CAM. And so the whole idea is to whet their appetites.

You see them in high schools and sometimes in grade schools. I mean, it sounds like almost like a craft room or an art room, but with the advent of 3D printing and pretty much--Cricuts are another thing. Silhouettes are these little machines that make things. So they all involve using your head creatively. But nowadays, there's some software skills involved to tangibly turn that into something else. I have students that come into our Makerspace that have never lifted a hammer or a screwdriver.

Shop doesn't exist in many schools anymore. There's such inequities in high schools around the country and especially our state, depending on your zip code. So some students come in super skilled with cool Makerspaces like Da Vinci in Davis had just spent millions of dollars--it's a charter school over in Davis--to students that are, like at Hiram Johnson in Sacramento, that are just being thrown through.

And they come to us and then their eyes just pop open because we supply everything. So, you know, I believe--like it was mentioned--since I worked at Apple for several years, the next Steve Jobs and the next Greta Gerwigs are in our midst right now, and they need to be incubated and nurtured. And it doesn't take a lot. It takes passionate faculty--as you can tell, we're sort of evangelists about it--and a space to come together. And it's not the classroom with a bunch of desks, you know, you'll see, we'll get you there. And, Pam, do you want to add to it?

Just the true secret sauce is creatives hanging out with other creatives; that is really what is the magic of the space. And so even though we have all these things--because I always say it has all the things to make, all the things that you may want to. And truly, as an artist, I see stuff and I'm like, "oh, I could make that." I'm at the point where I'm like, "should I make that? Is it worth my time and energy?"

But the real magic is hanging out with other creatives because everybody feeds off each other and everything like that. Like one of my students, I asked them, what is the most important thing that you learned here? And she said that it's an iterative process and Makerspaces teach you that like nothing else, just because you have to keep trying over and over again to do it.

And this is something that we're--this effort is going on at every level, K-12 now, too? You're seeing it implemented in high schools and middle schools?

Mostly high schools and middle schools. I've never seen it in an elementary school, but like I said, the library is a really good place to plonk a Makerspace because librarians, number one, school libraries, I could go into a whole thing. This is not the place for that. But librarians are really good at integrating technology into things. We deal with everyone.

And so I would really encourage that as an option for--but I don't want to take away from traditional library stuff because that's also super important because libraries are places of refuge like nothing else. And the empathy piece, school libraries are like the last piece where you're getting empathy.

I would add real briefly that the City of Woodland Library has one of the most beautiful Makerspaces I've seen on a small scale. And that's just up the road. They created a room about one 1500 square feet, and the entire community has embraced it. And they funded just one person to run it and then community volunteers. And it is spectacular to see people coming together--seniors, young folks, just to play around with technology and make buttons, badges, T shirts, wood projects.

And so that's an access point. Just like community colleges are access points for large populations,

And public libraries and community colleges are in the lower income areas in a way that--you know, God bless, I'm a person that came out of UC and CSU. But community colleges, if you really want to improve equity, focus on community colleges. And then public libraries would be another area. I think those two spots are really well situated to move this forward.

Okay, I got to come see it. I'm hearing all this and I'm picturing much of it, but I got to.

Come take a class. I'm teaching in the spring.

I can actually create a design thinking workshop for you all to attend. If you want to have. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, we'll do it.

All right, good. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Great. A lot of field trip ideas. Just curious about issues relating to diversity, because we've talked a little bit about diversity issues thus far. So I just want to get everybody's sort of perspectives on that, and tying that question, Jasson, into Snaps--your summer programs--how do students get picked for Snap? Is Santa Monica is in your district too? So that's another field trip for you.

Seven El Segundo too, as you mentioned, literally, World Series champion El Segundo.

I'm happy to start there and then turn it over to the rest of the panels. So our Snap Academy's program is open to community college students. It started initially with just Santa Monica Community College. Our first class had 15 students. Based on the success, we've expanded it to all LA County community colleges, and we now offer the program to 60 students every summer, 15 students per program.

We emphasize diversity of kind of all measures--racial ethnicity, gender, as well as socioeconomic factors--in the application and the selection process. Because, again, our goal is to really reach students that oftentimes are overlooked, don't have the network, necessarily. By working with community colleges, we naturally are starting with an already more diverse pool than if we were to offer this program, with our amazing UC program, for example, and even the Cal States, I would say.

So that's really why we've been continually committed to working with community colleges to grow and build this program.

Great. Thank you. Other issues pertaining--

I would add just real quickly, I mean, our school is a Hispanic-serving institution. And Sacramento, as you know, is an incredibly diverse place. And being that we're downtown, diversity has never been a serious issue. But we encourage people coming together by hosting student clubs like the Umoja Club, Puente, Mesa, things like that.

So we've gotten a lot of buy-in from a lot of different factors at the college, and it seems to be working great, bringing them all together to work on stuff together.

But you need to make sure that the faculty and the staff are diverse so that the students and the community sees themselves in the space. And that is something that's super important, is creating those pipelines so that you get diverse, so that people see diversity and that enables diversity.

Thank you.

Yeah, and I was just going to add, our STEM programs are very diverse, but one of the key factors is, in order to retain that, you have to give them the time and the opportunities to do these kind of hands on projects. And most of the students are low-income, so they have side jobs. And those side jobs sometimes don't allow for the privileged time of doing these kind of interactive, STEAM-like projects.

And so the key there is the fellowships, you know--being able to pay and reduce their time, being a barista or working outside jobs just to get through school. So there's some real economic barriers.

The UC system, like the CSU and the community colleges are already a majority student of color population. But what does this mean in terms of bringing the arts and STEM together? I actually spoke with Saul Viegas, who's a banana slug through and through. He is an art department undergrad BA, and he's currently an MFA candidate in Digital Art and New Media program. And he's currently teaching the next generation how to create digital art, to bring fine art and digital art together.

And there's something he said to me that I'm still trying to figure out, which is the way in which he brings different traditions and different sensibilities to his aesthetic practice, not only enriches the sciences, but requires us to think about changing the way in which we consider: where is STEM home? Where is STEAM home? We need to change our archives.

We need to change the way our departments and our exhibition spaces are organized to accommodate these new ways of thinking that come from him, certainly from his identity as a person of color working in digital art. The students know what needs to be done in the future. We need to listen to them.

Thank you very much.

And then I always think of design, because that's a piece of art. People sometimes refer to technology as being neutral. I hear that actually a fair amount. Technology is never neutral. Technology, because anything is designed by humans, is based on a specific need of humans. And the teenage girl in Mumbai has completely different needs than things. There are huge swaths of people that we are missing in terms of helping the amount of opportunity that we're losing, that could help all of us, is spectacular if we don't do better with diversifying things. And a huge piece of this is economics. It's economics. We all know this. So it's not the only piece of it, but it's a big piece of it, supporting people so they can afford to make a living.

Thank you. Thank you so much to all of our panelists, on both panels. I've learned a lot, and I know all the Members here have as well. We're now going to move on to public comment. For those in the audience, please step up to the mic if you'd like to provide public comment. Each person has two minutes. Please make sure to introduce yourself and your association.

Hello, testing. Is that what works? Hello, committee Members. Dain Olsen, Media Arts specialist, teacher and leader in the development and establishment of K-12 Media Arts in LAUSD, California and nationally. Media Arts is in the California Arts Standards and Framework. It is in California Educational Code two times for those publications and for Proposition 28. However, to be an official subject area, it needs to be in those two main sections that define an arts education.

I am proposing legislation to align ED code and request a single subject credential from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Media Arts has a broad range of forms, including video, sound, animation, graphics, interactive game design, virtual augmented reality design and AI, holography and 3D printing, and offered as a creatively, unlimited environment for STEAM inquiry and production, Media Arts is jet fuel for STEAM. Media Arts is a multimodal aesthetic synthesizer that can create, simulate, capture, organize, communicate or design anything imaginable.

Media Arts is an interactive, interdimensional textbook and transdisciplinary Makerspace on steroids. This affords Media Arts students unlimited capacities to learn, experience and create, as well as program, engineer, interact with, manipulate and play with math-intensive 3D architectural designs, engineered interactive 3D animated models for physics principles, the human circulatory system, weather systems, video game designs for mastering mathematical operations. The list is infinite. With profuse means and alternative pathways of learning and demonstrating their learning, all students, including those with socioeconomic challenges, have exponentially more ways of acquiring and demonstrating proficiency in any subject. This capability presents a paradigm shift--inverting the educational system to a fully student-centered, inclusive, equitable, collaborative, active, inquiry, constructivist and project-based model aligned with the latest research in the learning sciences. As per Darlene Hammond, it is urgent that we finish the job of establishing Media Arts education as an official subject area in California by aligning educational code and creating the credential. Thank you.

Thank you. Others? Thanks so much. Thanks everyone for coming today. This concludes our Joint Committee on the Arts hearing, but only the beginning of many more discussions on STEAM and other topics as well. Thank you all for coming, especially you to our panelists. Thank you.