Assembly Standing Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, and Tourism

Well, good afternoon, everybody. I want to thank you all for being here with us today. This is a joint informational hearing by the Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports and Tourism, as well as the Assembly Education Committee. And we're going to be focusing today on arts education funding which was passed by the voters with Proposition 28 in the year 2022.

Prop 28 funding represents the investment in arts and music education in the country. It's impacting an estimated 6 million pre K through 12th grade students, including charter schools and eligible preschool programs.

The intention behind Prop 28 was to provide all California students with consistent and well funded arts education, support arts teachers jobs and boost student engagement and academic success.

Now, this informational hearing is occurring in the middle of the third year that these funds have been available to local educational agencies at a time when we are really hoping to get a better understanding of how well schools have been able to access and utilize these dollars in order to provide expanded opportunities for students to engage in the visual and performing arts.

I'm eager to hear from all of our panelists here today who represent school districts and administrators, as well as research and researchers and advocates about the ways that funding from Prop 28 have led to successful outcomes.

I'm also interested in getting a better understanding of the challenges that schools have faced in order to make sure that that these funds are used in a way which meets the established guidelines in the original proposition.

Most importantly, I'm hoping to get some of their thoughts on some of the potential changes that we can look at, which will provide LEAs with more clarity and ease of access.

It would also be great to hear from you some of your thoughts on the current reporting requirements for schools and what additional data would be helpful in the future to gauge the impacts of these funds are having on things such as student attendance and engagement in extracurricular activities, behavioral outcomes or more.

We're grateful for their expertise and for the perspectives that you all will be able to add to these conversations. So we're going to have our panelists testify today in three groups and then at the conclusion of each panel, we'll then open up the discussion to Committee Members with any questions.

Now, at the conclusion of all the panels, we will have time reserved for public comment, which we are hoping will include additional educational and arts institution related organizations or other entities which provide your own unique perspectives.

At this time, I'd like to invite the Education Committee Chair, Assembly Member Muratsuchi, to make any opening remarks you have before we kick off.

All right, thank you very much, Chair Ward and I also want to welcome everyone to this very important hearing today to explore the implementation of Proposition 28. We know that when Proposition 28 passed, we're all excited that we established for the first time a permanent funding source dedicated to arts education in the state of California.

We know that for too long, you know, not all children have had equal access to the benefits of arts education. Every child in California deserves an education in the arts. And so, you know, we've had, I've had the opportunity to participate in hearings in the Budget Committee on the implementation of Proposition 28.

But I'm looking forward to hearing, you know, one, this ongoing concern about are the funds being used to supplement and not supplant arts education funding.

And two, you know, what are the opportunities and challenges in terms of the 80% staff requirement, you know, the requirement to be spent on school staffing versus, you know, how is that impacting, how is that working with the community arts organizations? So I look forward to discussing and hearing from the witnesses on these important issues. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And just to see Assembly Member Garcia, any opening thoughts or comments? None today. Okay, well, we'll get straight to our first panel then. It's a one person panel, but an important one. We're going to welcome up Dylan Hawkesworth Lutzow, the Fiscal and Policy Analyst with the Legislative Analyst Office.

Really appreciate the report that is being released today and you're here to give us a a good overview of Proposition 28. I think it's good ground setting for the rest of our discussion today. When you're ready, you can go ahead and begin your presentation.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairs, Members. My name is Dylan Hawksworth Lutzow with the Legislative Analyst Office. We were asked to provide a brief overview of Proposition 28. We did also bring a handout today. I hope you have that. And for anyone else who would like to look at it, it's also [email protected] a little bit of background.

First, the state does require that schools provide arts education to grades one through six and then provide arts courses to higher grades specifically for high school. We do know that high schools that align their graduation requirements with UC A through G admission requirements do also require their students to take an arts course to graduate.

Then, specifically for Proposition 28, beginning in 202324 it required the state to provide arts funding equal to 1% of the total Proposition 98 funding that was allotted to schools in the previous year. So in 202324 that was about $900 million. And that's risen over time to nearly $1.1 billion in 202526.

This funding is distributed based on a formula. About 70% or exactly 70%, excuse me, is distributed based off of a school's share of statewide enrollment and then the remaining 30% is based off of a school's share of low income students.

Just as the funding is distributed based on the formula, there are also some rules for how schools are able to spend this money. 80% of it is required to be spent on school staff. There are a couple of exceptions to that rule. If a school district has fewer than 500 students, they are exempted from that requirement.

And then districts can also submit a request to the Department of Education for a waiver from that requirement as well.

Beyond that 80% requirement, there is also local boards are allowed to spend up to 1% of that funding on administrative costs and then the remainder can be spent on additional materials, additional training, arts contractors, or even additional staff.

In terms of reporting requirements, school principals do need to develop a plan each year for how Proposition 28 funds will be used. But that plan doesn't need to be submitted anywhere. In terms of what does actually need to be submitted? The school board.

Each year, each school board needs to develop a report on how Proposition 28 funds were used during that year. And that report then needs to be posted on the local website, the local school district or charter school website, and then also submitted to the Department of Education.

Additionally, there is also a yearly audit of how funds are spent. That concludes my comments. I'm happy to take questions at the appropriate time. Thank you.

Great. Thank you for your presentation. I guess I'll kick it off and ask you talked about there are some limited exemptions. Are there any other disparities that you're seeing in Prop 28 allocations? I guess on a percentage basis, whether that's a student teacher ratio basis.

Any other inequities you're seeing between some of the large school districts or other more rural or suburban school districts?

I don't have comprehensive data on that. I'm sure we'll get more information over time though.

Okay. What ways are schools still able to utilize any of the funding that was from the end of the 2024 school year? I've heard that for a lot of them that funds that which became available in May of that school year, is that correct?

I'm not positive on when exactly funds were first made available for schools, but I do know that for each year of funding they have, I believe three. Three school years within which they are allowed to spend that funding. So they do have some time.

Do you have any aggregate information that's going to be probably brought up in some of our other panels as well too.

But you know, the importance here was to really begin to help to support some of the new jobs and then to really underscore, you know, the 80% that we were talking about that we want to be able to have the great arts and music and other related teachers that can be able to support the intents of this proposition.

Are you seeing or do you have any data on that growth to date?

I don't. I will also note that as this has been relatively new funding, a lot of school districts might not have actually spent much money yet or this might be the first year given that they've had three years that they're allowed to spend the money within since they get it to start spending it. So they might still be in the early stages.

So if I could just add, Edgar Cabral with the Legislative Analyst Office, I think there have been well, we have heard a bit of delays initially first with when the funds were received and I don't recall the exact time but I think there was some time before the funds were actually allocated from the Department to the to school districts and charter schools.

But then also that because there have been some questions or and I know that future panelists will talk a little bit more about questions about some of the rules regarding how the funds should be spent. What's district controlled, school controlled? How does the sub how do the requirements to supplement funding? How does that interpret it there?

I think what we have heard is there some school districts were kind of waiting a little bit and held off in spending those funds immediately hoping for additional clarity. And so there is still they have three years to spend. So this would be kind of this is the last.

At the end of this school year we'll finally have one kind of the timeline where where all of the funds from 2324 must have been spent. So we there may be a little bit more information but I think in terms of what the state receives, we don't receive any specific reports on that.

School districts just have to report themselves what they do and they have to get audited. So in terms of statewide collection, I think we don't have any particular data at the time.

So I know this report is just released today that we're absorbing. There are annual reports have been moving forward are right over from from these school districts which are housed on their websites and also sent up to CDE. Have you been able to at least sample those.

I'm not asking for like, you know, looking over hundreds and hundreds of all of these reports, but kind of get a sense for progress on these metrics.

I think we could, we have been able to, you know, go on, on websites and see kind of what some of those plans are and what the, what the, what some of the General categories are. But in terms of having aggregated data, to be able to tell you, for example, how much is being spent on.

Representative data is fine too. Yeah, yeah, we haven't had that. Those also reflect their plans. So it doesn't reflect, you know, I think final information to know sort of what are the, what were the actual expenses at the end? Okay, thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi.

Thank you. So just to follow on Chair Ward's questions. Your. The overview that you provide indicates that local governing boards are to report each year that we're just having the first year of reporting this school year.

I believe they've been reporting over the last few years. It's just there might be some school districts that haven't spent much money up until this school year, and so their reports might have not included much information. Okay, and you said that the funds have to be spent within three years.

That's my understanding, yeah.

I think part of the delay is sort of, for example, if you want to verify that, that a school district has spent 80% of its funds on staff. Well, if they haven't spent all their funds yet, then you can't verify that. So you got to wait till the whole.

So I think some of that, the better understanding of those expenditures need to happen once, once the, they've had the full three years to be able to, to decide on how the funds are spent.

Okay. And I know we're going to be hearing from West Ed in terms of confusion at the school and district level related to allowable expenses under Proposition 28. But I mean, just generally to clarify, the 80% spending requirement on staffing that, that is on. On school district employees. That's correct.

Okay, so that is essentially limiting the funds to be spent on community based arts organizations to provide education programs. And your overview also indicates that the Department of Education may allow a school site to spend less than 80% on staff. So that exemption is done on a school site by school site basis rather than district wide.

I believe the waiver covers the entire district if they're approved.

Okay, so. So if a district applies for the waiver, then the entire district is eligible. Have there been any waivers issued by the Department of Education?

Yeah. I don't have exact numbers of how many waivers, but there definitely have been waivers issued. Yes. The last number I saw, and this probably isn't up to date, so I apologize for that. But the last number I saw was that for 23-24.

I think it was around 8%. Yes. They have their waivers approved. 8% of districts. I'm actually, I'm not sure whether that was approved waivers or submitted requests for waivers.

Okay. All right. And I understand that smaller school sites, less than 500 in enrollment, have been struggling to spend Proposition 28 funds. As you know, they may not have the necessary funding for new hires. Does the language of Proposition 28 specify whether multiple school sites within a school district or an LEA can pool the Proposition 28 funds?

That was our understanding, because it doesn't limit kind of the way the language is written. It does seem to give the schools kind of discretion, but that if the school wants to pull resources with another school, that there's nothing that we saw in the language that would. That would make that not viable.

But again, with this and many others kinds of questions, there has been uncertainty regarding what some of these rules are. They haven't been, to my knowledge. That particular question I haven't heard. There have been some lawsuits related to this. That's not one that I've heard any kind of conversation around. That was just our interpretation.

When we read, you know, when we put together our ballot materials for the voter guide. We. We. We thought that it seemed like that would be allowable.

All right. And so it's the Lao's opinion that the language would allow this. And to your knowledge, this has not been the subject of litigation in any of the pending cases over Proposition 28?

That's right. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Garcia.

Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit about the clarity being 15 months removed from a school site and having to do this single plan for student achievement plans and the budgeting for the school. I know a lot of districts delayed the implementation because they didn't receive guidance.

So to your knowledge, what guidance has been provided regarding the rules of what counts as art instruction, who can be hired, and the allowable expenses?

To our knowledge, I think the Department has some guidance up on their website that has some basic information, I think, but there are still some key areas where, from what we've heard, there's still desire for more clarity. And I'm sure many of the panelists in the Next panel can talk a little bit about more of them.

But in particular what we've heard about are the question of what does it mean that this funding has to supplement existing or local spending on arts education. And I think some of the, some of the. Exactly how you. The 80% is calculated.

I think the part of what's somewhat complicated with this language is that the 80% requirement is about the school district as a whole. The school district has to spend 80% on staffing. But then the way that the language is also written, school sites have discretion to decide how to spend the money.

So, so there is this sort of tension there with if school sites. School sites need to have flexibility, but at the same time the school district needs to as a whole comply with those requirements.

No, I understand that. So that you talked about the three year timeline to utilize the funds. But at what point in those three years was guidance provided for the school sites to make these decisions?

I'm not sure the exact time. I know that it's. We could go back and look, but I can't speak to exactly when that guidance was kind of published and posted on the department's website.

Well, thank you for this presentation this morning. Appreciate the overview. I know it's something we'll continue to monitor, hopefully on an annual basis to make sure that we are delivering on the voters intents here and want to conclude this panel and appreciate your time. Thank you. We will welcome up our second panel, a group of three panelists.

Please welcome Dr. Sharon Herpin, the senior research associate with WestEd. Dr. Veronica Alvarez, the Executive Director of Crete California and Kyle Holmes, the Director of Statewide Arts initiatives with the California County Superintendents. Take your time, but when you're situated, you may choose who goes first and begin your presentation.

I think we're pulling up the first set of slides for you, Dr. Herpin.

Thank you. And then you want to hit the button in front of you for the activate microphone.

Excellent. Thank you. Hi everybody, I am Sharon Herpin. I am with WestEd. If you are not familiar with WestEd, we are a nonprofit, nonpartisan research, development and service organization. Our headquarters are in San Francisco and we have offices in Sacramento, Southern California and quite a few other states.

And I get to talk about some of the research that we've been conducting on Prop 28. We were able to conduct some research. Sure. Get to the right side. zero, there we go. We were able to conduct research. We started with 10 interviews and an in person convening with 18 people.

From that, we translated those responses into a survey that we administered statewide and we were able to get 462 responses across the state. So we have very good representation and in fact we're very excited to say we got 48 out of 50 or sorry, 54 of 58 counties that had at least one respondent.

So we're very excited to have that representation across the state. Our survey included four different tracks based on their employment type. So we had school staff that was the largest number of people who responded. That included principals, APs, arts teachers, General education teachers, special education teachers.

At the district level, we had superintendents, other administrators and vapa, which is visual and performing arts. So we had a lot of VAPA coordinators who completed the survey. At the county level, we had county VAPA coordinators and different county office of education staff. So we did have 122 arts organization staff who also completed the survey.

But for today we're going to be focusing on the county, district and school staff, which was about 328 respondents. One of the questions that we did ask of all of these groups was how did you spend your Prop 28 money?

And of course the number one response and this was very consistent across all three groups was we purchased arts materials, we got art supplies in the classes. The next response was they hired. They either were able to hire staff or increased time of some of the existing staff.

And then the third one was providing arts based field trips to their students. In the perceptions of the participants, they felt there was a moderate positive impact resulting from Prop 28. Of course, the first being just the availability of the materials for the resources.

Another thing that came up was increased discussions about arts education and just more people talking about the arts, expansion of their arts programs and an increase in students being able to access the arts. About 50% of the respondents said that they saw at least a moderate Increase in student participation in the arts.

We did have an open ended question around strategies, lessons learned and successes. And we did some quick analysis and the first thing that came up was teacher empowerment that they were able to hire more teachers, increase time, get more help in the classrooms.

Other positives was just access to the materials, expanding student access, hiring coaches to help train their teachers came up quite a bit and just expanding their programs. When we talked to them on the opposite about some of the challenges, this was a place where they varied. So the counties really highlighted the inability to hire credentialed arts teachers.

The districts talked about competing academic priorities, that it was hard to get the time for the arts, and the schools talked about lack of knowledge about Prop 28. There were some consistencies across the groups which we've tried to color code here.

So lack of credentialed art teachers, competing priorities and some budget shortfalls were some of the common things there. In terms of some of the opportunities that we heard from the respondents, as mentioned, there was at the time of the survey, which was last year, there was some limited implementation. At that time they were talking about administrative issues.

There was definitely confusion around supplanting versus supplementing. They talked a bit about some of the teacher burden and just adjusting and even lack of teacher input. The teachers wanted to have more say in what they were going to be doing and how the funds were used and some additional themes that we just wanted to highlight.

They really do want more clarity about what is allowable use and what does supplanting mean in these cases. A need for more qualified arts teachers came up quite a bit. More flexibility was a request that we heard around that 8020 a desire for more leadership.

And specifically this came in terms of hiring VAPA coordinators and developing strategic art plans and then more guidance to help overcome some of the challenges they're experiencing around scheduling time for the arts, facility issues or just how to make room and space and overcome some of the teacher burdens.

Hello. Should I wait to make sure I had a presentation as well? But in the meantime, Chair Members, thank you for the opportunity to present today on the state of arts education in California and the implementation of the Art and Music Music in Schools act or Prop 28.

I'm here with my colleagues Abe Flores and Ricky Abiles on behalf of Create California, whose mission is to advocate for high quality arts education for all students by providing policy expertise and mobilizing a statewide network of advocates and allied partners.

So today, as Chair Muratsuchi already said, our North Star Is ensuring that the promise of arts education and statue becomes a lived reality for each of California's 6 million students. If our presentation was up. So you'll see, you have the resources. I think. Should I just keep going and it'll catch up. It'll catch up soon. I'm sure.

You want to get onto your mission.

Yes. Okay. In practice, heavily reliance on local public and private funding has deepened disparities. Affluent districts often supplement their state funding and they get robust sequential arts programs taught by credentialed teachers. Meanwhile, lower income and rural communities struggle. And I think that's why Prop 28 was supposed to address a lot of these issues.

But the result has been uneven. Arts education. Under California code, arts education is required for all students. Yet access is largely determined by local decisions, primarily through LCAP process. And an arts rich environment enhances LCAP priorities, including pupil achievement, engagement and school climate, which is on slide 4.

So I wanted to show how alignment with LCAP having arts rich aligns with LCAP priorities. While local control provides flexibility, it has also produced persistent inequities. In 2022, as you all know, the voters by 64%. Zero, there it is. 64% approved Prop 28, and it establishes a minimum source of annual funding to supplement arts programs.

So while a billion dollars sounds like a lot, it's still not enough to address all the inevit. Then from a community perspective, there's that. I think I'm caught up with the slides. There we go. From the community perspective, implementation of Prop 28 has generated both optimism and real challenges. First, the optimism.

There's a genuine excitement about the influx of new ongoing funds dedicated specifically to the arts. We've been in a lot of rooms where people, I think I've been in the arts for so long, but people are like, when are these ending? And we're like, you know, we're kind of a deficit model.

Like it's one time, this is it. But we always are really happy to say this is ongoing funding. It's a proposition. Advocates, educators, families and students see this as a once in a generation opportunity to build sustainable programs and correct longstanding inequities. At the same time, there has been confusion.

Some advocates and parents are asking why they're not seeing increases in in arts instruction at their local sites. So as mentioned in the previous panel, there has been like district wide, but that might not be seen at the school site.

There are questions about what supplement not supplant truly means in practice and what expenditures are allowable and how communities can hold districts accountable for faithful implementation.

We are also seeing changing roles in the ecosystem, as Dr. Herpin just mentioned, particularly affecting community arts organizations where that 80% of funds certified for classified staff have meant reduced contracts for arts organizations. Create California strives to act as a critical friend. At this moment we recognize the fiscal and operational challenges district face.

At the same time we maintain a clear and consistent call for accountability, transparency and students rights to the arts. Prop 28 was designed to expand access, not to replace existing programs or create new inequities. As implementation continues, several core challenges have emerged.

There's an ongoing tension, as you've already heard from other panelists, between the intent and the letter of the law. Questions persist around supplement and supplant its allowable uses. How to ensure compliance without creating unnecessary administrative burdens.

As you might be aware, you're probably aware there's only one person overseeing this billion dollars and so that like that's a lot of responsibility on one person when this was implemented.

There's concern about possible unspent funds, particularly given that each allocation is available for three years and the time limited spending window can incentivize short term solutions rather than strategic long term investments. Accountability mechanisms need further clarity and consistent community voice and shared decision making limit the transparency that voters expected.

Moreover, unreliable and uncomplete data on arts courses offerings, particularly at the elementary level, makes it difficult to really assess Prop 28's impact. Secondary course data has not been publicly released since 20182019 or which significantly muddies our understanding of statewide progress.

And a lot of that has to do with some technical barriers and the fact that there's one person. So technical assistance in this area would be greatly helpful. Finally, and perhaps most critically, we face an arts educator shortage. Teachers are the single most important school based factor for student success.

Without sufficient pipeline of credentialed arts educators, even dedicated funding cannot fully translate into expanded access access. There was a report that we need about 5,500 new arts educators and universities are graduating only about 700 this year, so it's a long term issue. In light of these challenges, we respectively respectfully offer several recommendations for your consideration.

First, providing greater clarity, clear guidance on supplement and supplant the waiver process accountability expectations because transparency is essential to maintaining the public's trust. Second, ensure valid, reliable and continuous data. We need comprehensive arts education course data at the elementary level and the release of the secondary data. Third, address the art education teacher shortage.

We recommend that art educators be formally recognized as part of California's Creator critical teacher shortage area. And at the same time, we seek to ease credentialing pathways without sacrificing rigor and to maintain funding for residency programs and other incentives that build a sustainable workforce. And finally, invest in technical assistance.

Districts need support in strategic planning, professional and program development, and to faithfully implement Prop 28 Technical Assistance Centers focused specifically in art education. Utilizing existing infrastructures such as COEs could help ensure that funds are used thoughtfully.

With clear guidance, strong data and a robust educator pipeline and sustained collaboration between the Department of Education districts and communities, we can ensure that the AMS act become a model of equitable implementation not just in statute, but in every classroom in California. Thank you for your leadership and your commitment to California students.

Great. Thank you. Then next, Mr. Holmes, thank you.

I have slides as well. Hopefully you have copies in front of you. Chairs and Members, thank you for having us today. My name is Kyle Holmes and I serve as the Director of the California County Superintendent's Statewide Arts Initiative.

It's a statewide initiative through the California County Superintendents association and through the Arts Initiative, I have the privilege of supporting all 58 counties as they work to build regional capacity and help districts as they implement high quality arts education throughout the state.

Because county offices are positioned between statewide policy and implementation at the local level, we've had a really unique perspective on some of the early successes and struggles of Prop 28, and I'm excited to share some of those with you today.

But we will start with some Successes because Prop 28 is working and there are challenges and it's easy for us to get focused on that. But we are expanding access to arts education across the state.

We have more students engaging in arts programs than ever before, especially in communities where maybe there were little or no arts programs prior. We're hiring classified and certificated teachers all across the state more than ever before.

And through strategic arts planning, we have communities that are mapping out together with their schools and their community partners what responsible Prop 28 planning and hiring can look like over the next 510 years. So let's look at what this looks like across the state. In San Bernardino County, one large district hired 25 elementary arts teachers.

It expanded access to the Arts to 22,000 students. There's another district in San Bernardino county that hired 36 arts teachers and for the first time, those students were able to have access to all four disciplines of dance, theater, music and art, which to have those options at the primary level is remarkable.

In San Joaquin and Stanislaus Counties, they've hired Almost a combined 200 arts teachers in Stanislaus County, specifically those teachers have been hired with a real equity lens looking at how we can provide arts instruction to populations of students that maybe haven't been served by the arts prior. TK students are at risk. Youth, adult learners.

And in San Diego county, we've had a series of new strategic plans that now outline a roadmap for almost a quarter of a million students and how that Prop 28 money is going to be used to support them in hiring over the next five to 10 years.

There's a district in Humboldt County that just implemented their first strategic arts plan. And for the first time in that district's history, they have a roadmap for what sequential arts instruction will look like all the way from TK through grade 12.

And a lot of that is coming because of Prop 28 and the conversations that it's starting in these communities. So broadly, it's been very successful. There's a lot of good stuff happening across the state. We're really proud of it. Next. Which is not to say that there aren't challenges. You've heard my colleagues talk about this as well.

The workforce capacity remains an issue. 80:20 remains really challenging, especially for our small and rural districts. The statutory ambiguity I know everyone has touched on so far, so I want to reiterate it. We have districts that are being overly conservative in their implementation because they are worried of not doing it correctly.

And that's coming as a result of their lack of understanding around what the definitions of supplement, supplant and pre existing funds mean.

We've heard from districts all over the state that are going to have to return some of their Prop 28 funding at the end of this year, which will be the end of the first three year cycle.

Not because they don't want to support the arts, but because they don't want to be out of compliance with how they spend it. That's a problem. There's also an equity issue that we need to look at as well. We have a lot of districts all over the state that have 50 to 60 students.

So their Prop 28 allocation is only 7 to $10,000. That's not really enough to hire a part time teacher, let alone establish a sequential arts program for those students. And lastly, I want to make sure we touch on a support gap that's happening.

For context, Title 1 funding is about a $2 billion allocation at the California Department of Education. There are multiple offices and dozens of employees to support that and the technical assistance of how that money gets spent. I'm Speaking from firsthand experience, I spent four years in the Title 1 monitoring and support office.

So I know what really good technical assistance can do for our school districts and how they can feel confident about supporting and spending for their students. Comparatively, we have a billion dollar allocation for Prop 28, and there is a single education program consultant in charge of the technical support of that funding for the entire state of California.

And that individual does an amazing job, but it's too much for one person. So our county offices, our local partners have all had to step in to help support implementation. In closing, the momentum of Prop 28 is extraordinary. The commitment and the progress.

We're having conversations about arts education across the state that we've never had before because of this funding. And there's a lot of promise ahead in the short term. We need some statutory clarity around some of these terms and it would help school districts feel confident in spending that money immediately.

And in the long term, we need to strengthen our technical assistance and provide support for LEAs so they have someone to reach out to and they can feel confident in that.

And we need to be mindful of our hiring struggles and the workforce that just doesn't exist right now for all of the vacancies that we have throughout the state. I appreciate you all taking the time to talk about arts education today and thank you for caring about our kids.

Thank you and same to you. Really appreciated all three of these presentations. I definitely saw some common narrative there and also some really good conclusions and recommendations. I'm going to defer to my colleagues maybe to kind of kick off this. Any questions for this panel?

I'm happy to clean up that towards the end, but maybe begin with Mr. Garcia.

So I had a couple questions kind of more broad because we're talking about arts education. So what is the guidance provided in terms of what is arts education? So I know we're all familiar, like music, drama, but would like computer animation be considered arts education? So what categories and where is that defined?

In 2019, the state of California adopted standards for five disciplines and that would be music, visual art, dance, theater and media arts. And so there are media arts standards and a curriculum framework that could apply to maybe some of those things that you mentioned. Specifically during the school day is what we're focusing on as well.

And in terms of kind of minimum requirements of instruction in the arts, Specifically K through 8, where is that defined? I'll defer to my colleague on that.

Well, it's supposed to be sequential and offered in four. Well, in that four, now five Areas it's supposed to be offered sequential standards aligned. And what we define as like culturally responsive pedagogy would be ideal in grades first through sixth and then in the secondary schools are supposed to offer all 545 forms.

With the media arts, it's kind of new. They're supposed to be offered, but students don't have to take them. But it is supposed to be sequential in the elementary levels on all four disciplines.

So in terms of a school day, is there a minimum requirement five days a week?

There's no minutes designated, as it is in the PE standards, but there's no minutes designated.

Theoretically, it could be a day, a month.

Yeah, theoretically. And we found that the research that we have is that only 11% of schools are offering all four pre prop. 28. Because I'm like, there's a lot of amazing things happening Pre Prop 28, only 11% of schools were offering all four disciplines in grades K through 6.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question, we talked about a lack of credentialed staff. What are the credentials that are required for arts educators?

There's. So at the primary level it can be a multiple subject credential. At the secondary level, there are now credentials in theater and dance, which is relatively new. And so those pathways to those credentials are not as well established through our university system. There is a music credential and what am I missing? Visual art.

There's a visual art credential. And there's also career technical education that could apply in some of these situations as well.

Okay, and then the question. So if there is someone that's perhaps a veteran actor that wanted to work in a school district, they would have to go through these credential requirements?

Yes, one of them. One of those pathways. And they would each look a little bit differently. The career technical education credential is in place for working professionals that have that industry experience and expertise to be able to hopefully step into a classroom quicker than going through the traditional credential process.

All right, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Muratsuchi.

So as a former school board Member, I know that too often during recessions, art and music programs are the first to get cut. And, and so that was supposed to be the promise of Proposition 28. I. I'm wondering if there's any.

I don't know if this is for the county superintendents or wested, but, you know, given that with the expiration of the one time Covid dollars that many districts are facing, you know, do we see, is there evidence of school districts sitting on proposition $28 or is that three year spending requirement making that a non issue? As far as the Proposition 28 funds.

Do you mean in terms of them using the funds?

In terms of using proposition $28 for non proposition 28 purposes?

That was not something we specifically asked about. Scanning through comments, there were some at the school level who thought that there might be some misuse of funds, but we have not dove into those specifically.

But I mean you haven't heard of any, I mean you haven't seen any lawsuits or any complaints, you know, across the board in terms of those type of allegations of, of the misuse of proposition $20 for non proposition 28 purposes?

I mean. Well, we, there is the LAUSD lawsuit that is happening. But I think your question very much aligns with why we need like the clear definitions of supplement supplant.

Because those one time Covid funds that are being sunsetted PTA funds, so private dollars, some schools that were using those funds to provide arts education schools are not sure if those, those funds are going away. Is that supplementing is supplanting if we're now using Prop$28 to continue those programs?

Ah, okay.

So there's, there's a bit of. It's not clear from the school's perspective of whether that would be the definition of supplementing or supplanting because it was always supposed to. If you spend a million dollars and now you're getting a million dollars from Prop 28, now you're supposed to be supplementing, spending $2 million.

But if those million dollars were going away because a pta, that would be amazing if a PTA could raise that amount of money. But. Or the COVID funding, if that's going away, how does that make sense with the supplements of plant? So that's what we're finding.

Okay. And I know that the county offices work with the Department of Education to provide guidance to school districts, but is it the position of the county superintendents that even as the guiders of districts that you need more clarification in terms of statutory clarification?

The short answer is yes. I think CDE has done everything that can do with the statute that's written. We have pushed and polled and asked for different explanations and clarifications on what's written. And there's only so many times that they're able to give us a similar answer, which is this is what the statute says.

The statute doesn't answer the question that you're asking me. That's as far as it Goes. So unfortunately, what we're seeing in a lot of county offices across the state is the advice that our county offices are giving their districts is this is what we can say. This is what CDE saying.

You need to consult your legal team to decide if this is how you should be spending your funding or not. Which would be great if we could have more clarity and avoid that.

So, you know, I represent both affluent school districts as well as low income school districts, but I know that, you know, for example, Manhattan Beach Unified, their education foundation raises like over $6 million every year if they were devoting funds to arts and music education.

Is Proposition 28 currently clear in terms of whether the dollars need to supplement the dollars raised by the education foundation?

It is not. So those private dollars that are raised and given to support those arts programs, there is not clarity as to whether those should be counted as pre existing funds or not for the arts. And that's where a lot of the confusion is coming in.

All right, in terms of the, what are the penalties for non compliance with Proposition 28.

There'S no specific penalties.

Okay.

So other than the funds get clogged back to the Department of Ed and then reallocated for the next year.

So if there are no penalties, then why would districts choose to return unspent funds rather than, you know, taking a chance and spending it?

So there is an audit process through cde and this is reviewed as part of that audit process. And we know that there have been audit findings that have been made public due to a variety of reasons. It's a good question that you're asking, but there is a fear of.

I think ultimately the fear would be if I misspend the funding or I spend it in a non allowable way and then I'm audited, and that's found in the audit. I would have to reimburse those funds from unrestricted funding that I might not have. So it's avoiding having to pay that money out of unrestricted General funding.

All right, thank you. Great. Thank you. Assembly Member Zbur.

Good morning. Thank you so much for being here today. I have sort of a bigger picture question, which I'm not even quite sure how to ask it, but I'm. I think the question is who is sort of making decisions based on sort of the equities of wanting to, I think, achieve sort of multiple goals?

I mean, one goal I assume is making sure that all kids have access to arts and music education. I would assume that another goal, though is that for kids that actually have a focus on arts and music, that we're actually giving them the tools they need to succeed.

And I. I say that as a parent of a daughter who went to ... and. And which is the magnet school in LA County for arts and music education, which is an incredibly, you know, just an extraordinary school. This is very competitive to get into.

And the thing that, you know, I've always told my daughter that she should be very grateful about is that, you know, that was a resource that I think kids throughout the state should have an opportunity to access.

And I wondered the extent to which this kind of funding is being made available for, you know, kids in Fresno or Modesto, you know, that are not in LA County, to have sort of access to those kinds of programs. And so it's a General question on sort of what are our goals?

Are our goals primarily to make sure that kids. That all kids have access to art, music, education, and so we're actually giving it to all school districts to supplement programs that in some places are inadequate? Or is the goal, in part also to make sure that we have programs for kids that we.

That, you know, should have the opportunities to focus on art and music as well, and those resources may not be equitably available in all parts of the state?

I'm so glad that your daughter goes there. I love that school. And I just went to visit a few months ago. I think the intent of Prop 28 was to make sure that all students get access across the state.

You're in a very urban area, and so those schools that get the least access are the kids in the rural school districts.

The intent is to make sure that all students at least get access because, yeah, we don't know if they're going to want to focus in that unless they are able to experience music and dance and theater. And. And so it's to do that. And then ideally, then we could have ... all over the state.

And I guess what is the. What's the mechanism to get kids all over the state that want to focus? I mean, I assume. Assume we need more pots of money. Yeah.

And the expertise. I think that that's why we talking about, like, the teacher workforce. There's a lot of rural school districts that have amazing experts that are working within the community, but they may not be credentialed yet. And so giving them resources to get credentialed, giving them the stipends, like model residency programs.

I know SAC State does a virtual one to address the need for those kinds of programs in rural areas. For people that live in those communities.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for presentations. Maybe just to kind of put a pin in some of the higher level points that are here.

First of all, it's my assumption that rural school districts are having more of a challenge compared to urban counterparts as well on how to be able to implement that or ultimately the success of being able to implement that and meet some of these outcomes.

Is there any allowance to possibly allow neighboring or more regional coordination between smaller school districts? So that you mentioned, for example, in one of the presentations that there was only, you know, $5,000 or $10,000 available based on that student population.

But could there be some consolidation of effort that allowed for a pooling of that that would benefit all of those school districts?

I think what we're seeing with that, we're seeing schools pull their funding so that they can share a dance teacher. But then what's happening is that dance teacher is driving to a different school site every day, all five days of the week.

And when they get offered a job at the end of the year to be somewhere and not have to drive around, they're going to take it. And when we get out into our more rural communities, site sharing becomes 203040 miles.

And so I think people are doing the best they can to come up with solutions like that, but they're not sustainable solutions that are going to help build these programs for these kids in the long term.

Makes sense. And then can you dig a little deeper into the overarching issue around supplanting versus sorry, supplementing. Not supplanting. Because to me, understanding what I believe is like the meanings of those terms, it should be clear if there was existing programs, existing fundings, don't try to backfill that and use that program to.

So where is the ambiguity? I guess, like what's the common narrative that you're hearing about the confusion there and how do we improve on that? I guess for our direction or our work with CDE to be able to improve that definitional confusion.

So the confusion comes into, are we looking at supplementing collectively across funds at the whole school? Are we looking at supplementing and supplanting on a position by position basis?

So that is to say, if you were paying your dance teacher out of unrestricted General funding last year and now you have Prop 28 funding currently, there's nothing in the statute that says that's supplanting. The statute doesn't say that. The statute doesn't define supplanting in that way. Our definition in the statute of supplement is two sentences long.

For ESSA, the Federal Government has provided a 27 page non regulatory guide on supplement, not supplant. And so that's where the confusion is lying is in our business offices they're used to this very thorough document outlining different situations like that to help guide them in their decision making. And we have a two sentence definition.

Okay. Irregardless is not a word. Regardless. If we are trying to. Are we delaying impact here because of this confusion when.

If it's just a confusion in how we have defined something within governmental direction, are they able to either rely on guidance that is available through federal definition or just, you know, using their best judgment to sort of overcome that, or are we delaying the rolling out of these funds because we're waiting for more clarity?

I think partially that's true. We've heard anecdotally that when the LAUSD lawsuit happened, there was a chilling effect in some school districts that they didn't want to use the funds because they were afraid to get sued or afraid to be out of compliance. Then Kyle referred to this as well.

And again, Anatoly, we've heard that since the CDE could only go by the statute and they're asking to ask their counsel, some school districts get some guidance from council that contradicts guidance from a different lawyer about how they could use those funds and what supplement and supplant means. So yeah, so there's competing narratives.

Okay. All right. Well, clearly we have work to do on that space.

Last question I had is, do you feel for some of the research and the surveys work that you've been doing, are you seeing maybe some better input from school principals that are trying to make decisions about how things would best be applied at that school site versus district officials that are trying to make sure that for equity purposes across an entire district that programs are being, you know, appropriately.

Decisions are being appropriately applied.

It really varies on the district and the relationship that they have with their schools. So some of the schools have had a lot of input and have really taken the. Taken on that, getting the knowledge and figuring out how they want to spend it.

And they've gone out to get input from their families and made a lot of decisions and they'll communicate that with their district. Another factor is whether or not they have a VAPA coordinator.

We've heard that districts that have a VAPA coordinator have a teacher on special assignment kind of fulfilling that role, have been able to help guide schools and provide more input. So it really does vary by District.

Okay, great. Thank you. Mr. Mitsucci, follow up.

Yes. I meant to ask this earlier, but Dr. Herpin, did your survey address the question I saw in your Executive summary that. Confusion remains at the school and district level which resulted in less funded directed toward community arts organizations. So, I mean, I guess I.

Are you basically saying that it's the same issue, the lack of clarity is leading school districts to contract less with community arts organizations?

That did come out of the findings from our survey from those community arts organizations that they were losing contracts because districts were working to bring staff in and provide those services themselves instead of contracting it.

We also did hear from some arts organizations that districts were trying to hire or poach their teaching artists to get them into the classrooms as credentialed staff rather than working for the arts organizations.

All right, thank you. Great. Thank you. Mr. Garcia?

Yeah, just a follow up from a previous question. So, regarding the media, I'm sorry, the five disciplines, is there a framework available, too, and kind of how to implement those standards? Not just the what, but the how and best practices.

Yes, it was adopted 2021, I believe, recently revised, and it's available.

However, it was released around the time of COVID So usually the support systems of professional development that around when the frameworks are adopted, that was unable to happen. So.

Okay, that's lacking. All right, thank you.

Great. Thank you all. Well, I want to appreciate all of you and your expertise and dedication to the overall California arts education landscape. This has been really informative and gives us a little bit of notes on what we can be focusing on this year. So thank you for that. Want to welcome up our third panel.

These are school district officials to be able to discuss a little bit about the implementation of Proposition 28.

We'll have with us Dr. Jill Baker, who is the superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District, followed by Mary Sakuma, the superintendent of the Butte County Office of Education, and Chad Zullinger, the President of the California Music Educators Association.

Maybe. There he is. Thank you. And when you're situated and comfortable, you can begin your first presentation. Think you have slides as well? Maybe we'll try to pull up.

I do have slides. Thank you. Great. Give those a moment and I'll introduce myself. As the slides are coming up, I am Jill Baker, the proud superintendent of Long Beach Unified School District. Thank you to the chairs and Committee Members who are here to learn about implementation efforts, both the successes and challenges of Prop 28. Thank you.

Dr. Baker, could you scoot the microphone up just a little bit? It's really not great.

Long Beach Unified School District is a district of 61,000 students in the context of a very urban area, beautifully diverse community of students, about 88% of whom are students of color and about 2/3 of whom live below the lines of poverty. We are a district that stands on a foundation of what we consider excellence and equity together.

And that is true when we think about the implementation of Prop 28 and the Arts in our district. And I'm just pleased to be able to tell you or give you a little glimpse of that story. All right, so lots of good conversation, listening into the issues of supplement or supplant.

And so we, our district went into full implementation of Prop 28 in 20232024. As we saw the legislation moving along, we made initial preparation to be able to implement. And so this is actually our third year of what we consider full implementation. And I'll share a little bit about that.

We do have a foundation of decades of having what I think of as the value of arts underfunded, which gave students at the elementary level opportunities for coral and vocal music. I'm sorry vocal and instrumental music, which is what we consider our baseline.

In addition, we've had music and performing arts in our secondary schools prior to Prop 28. The implementation of Prop 28 funds allowed us to take immediate action at a time when two things were also happening.

We were reimagining education in Long Beach Unified post pandemic and thinking about what we wanted to be true for our students in ways that maybe had been different from the past.

And simultaneously in 2021, our Board of Education also passed an excellence and equity policy which is a driver to now future policies, including the way that we spend funds in service to our students. I heard a question about equity oriented funding.

So our implementation of Prop 28 was immediate and it did cause us to the challenges to seek a lot of clarity as we could to do a lot of sense making thinking about what is expansion, what is enhancement to get to full access.

We are fortunate to have an incredible VAPA arts leader in our district and Christine Whipp. I stand here with her voice in mind and thinking about the work that she was doing prior to Prop 28 and what it has allowed us to do in terms of expanded access and strengthening programs.

We moved from an elementary program that allowed for exploration of choral and instrumental music to full programming that includes choral, instrumental and art, dance and theater arts across our elementary schools at the middle and high school level.

I would describe prior to Prop 28 as being very dependent on school staff or what credentialing might have existed on a team of teachers in a middle or a high school to a strategically staffed implementation of arts programming across our school that we can now consider across Long Beach Unified. A comprehensive approach. Let me check my slides.

Okay, I think I'm. There we go. Okay. So speaking of equity driven orientation, the implementation of our Prop 28 has happened alongside a strategic plan. It's embedded into our strategic plan at this time that seeks to change the outcomes for historically marginalized and underserved communities.

So the way that we have thought about that is actually taking that excellence in equity policy. And then in 2023 our team performed an arts audit to actually look at what staffing looked like, what opportunities look like across our schools, to ensure that we weren't just supplementing something that actually had lots of issues in the original.

The original plan so really helped us to consider what existed across all of our schools, what we need to strengthen from our core programs, and then how we would supplement thinking about equity.

And so that arts audit led into the hiring of significant staff, 56 certificated staff Members, along with more than 120 coaches in the classified rank to support arts instruction. And then all kinds of staffing investments around specific instruction, course access, and then working with our local providers. Our budget is about $11 million annually.

Proud to say that we are spending that money on arts since the first year and not only have has this impacted our ability to, or our ability to offer arts, but I think about the expertise that has been brought in because of the hiring of arts specific staff that are drawn from our communities in the arts field, that come from museums and working in other places, and either have a CTE credential or a teaching credential that then brings their expertise right into a school building.

In addition to expertise, we found that the life experiences of artists have been important to what our students are experiencing. And the way that arts, a person who lives an artist's life and then comes in to teach has greatly enhanced what our students experience.

Then to a note about advancing, and I heard this mentioned, culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy in our district, when we think about quality core instruction, it is absolutely anchored in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy. And now we can say that that is true across our system for the arts arts.

The opportunities that are there for expression and meaning making in multiple languages we can appreciate across our dual language schools, across the 40 plus languages that are spoken. It is about representation in the arts. To see artists who look like you, who speak a language like you, who have a cultural background like you.

And also in terms of culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, our strategic plan speaks to being in and with community. And so that has been caused for the artist communities, the museums in our area to really join us both, not just for staffing, but also for the way that they can connect to our schools.

And a story that I heard just yesterday from one of our elementary school principals is not only does this have a direct impact on students in her building, and it also has an impact in a community who gets called in for an artistic cultural celebration for what we're celebrating from a heritage perspective connected to the culture of a community.

And so to hear that we have our Cambodian students affirmed their families coming into campus along with other community Members is more than what you can just say about arts instruction itself. And then lastly, let's see if I'm at my lastly slide. I think that's it.

Lastly, our district has been propelled by Prop 28 to move not just from a comprehensive program, but to a strategic plan for the arts.

I'm proud to say that our Board of Education recently approved that arts strategic plan that has many different facets that lays out for at least five years in phases, the implementation of high quality instruction in connections to the arts community, benefiting from the local expertise as well as national expertise with the use of Prop 28 funds.

And so while there are many challenges, there are also many successes.

And I'm super proud to represent my team today who has worked tirelessly to ensure that arts are not something separate from what students experience in our district, but they are now an integrated long term plan for how to really help students, many of whom live in underserved communities or have been marginalized educationally or from a system that now can access and have a sense of pride and connection because of what the arts represent across our district. Thank you.

Great. Thank you.

Chairs Muratsuchi and Ward and Members of the Committee. Good afternoon. I'm Mary Sakuma, Butte County Superintendent of Schools and the Region 2 chairperson for the California County Superintendents. Thank you for the opportunity to share how Proposition 28 is being implemented in Northern California, including where we are seeing success and where there are opportunities to Strengthen implementation.

Region 2 serves the largest number of rural students in California under the federal definition of rural and urban. Our districts range from Pre K through 12 systems serving thousands of students to communities with fewer than 40 students in rural education. Distance staffing and scale shape nearly every decision.

Programs often depend on a very small number of people and access to specialized instruction can be limited. But that reality does not change the need. Across our communities, we see the same thing. Students need and want our arts education and when they have access to it, they thrive. Prop 28's dedicated funding has proven this out.

The exemption from the 8020 rule for the local education agencies with fewer than 500 students and the three year spending window allow rural districts to plan, carry over funds and build programs over time rather than year to year.

As a result, we're seeing expanded arts education across classrooms, from restored visual and performing arts programs to partnerships that bring local artists directly into schools.

For example, in Oroville, the Butte County seat, Prop 28 funding supported two full time visual arts teachers serving four elementary schools, after school theater in the middle school level, and student design murals that have had a visible positive impact on school climate.

In Biggs, a K12 district of about 550 students with no music teachers across the system, Prop 28 funded teaching artists to provide elementary music and a high school samba program. The program is so popular with students that it's now expanding into a weekly offering.

At the same time, Challenges remain In rural parts of the state, the most significant challenge is workforce. Many districts cannot find or attract credentialed visual and performing arts teachers even when funding is available.

At Las Plumas High School, for example, the district wants to start a drama program but has been unable to fill the position to lead it and so the funds for that position are going unspent as well. Geography also plays a role. Long distances between sites increase costs and complicate scheduling.

Many districts rely on a single teacher or vendor and when that person leaves, programs can stall. In districts with multiple small schools, there is still confusion about the ability or inability to blend funds across sites. This makes it more difficult to build a cohesive agency wide arts plan.

Overall, Proposition 28 is working and we strongly support it to strengthen implementation in rural California. Districts need continued flexibility, strong technical assistance and clearer pathways, including support around CTE credentials and waiver processes so programs can be sustainable. It continues to be imperative that this historic investment reaches every student, no matter where they live.

Arts education is not about producing professional artists, although when that happens it is something to celebrate. It is about creativity, imagination and connection and helping students better understand themselves and the world around them. Thank you again Chairs Mehretsuchi and Ward and Members of the committees. It is an honor to be here and represent the North State.

Good afternoon. Good to see you again. Assemblymember my name is Dr. Chad Zellinger. I am Assistant professor for Music Education at Sacramento State University right down J Street. I also happen to be the President for the California Music Educators Association.

So we are a advocacy and professional development organization for nearly 3,000 music educators across the state and so let's see if the see if our clicker is working here today. So really happy to hear some of the research that's been done by our partners here today.

I'm my particular field of research happens to be in the qualitative area. And so we set up a CMEA setup about a year and a half ago. We set up a page off our website to collect stories. And the form was simply what are some things that are going well for you as a result of this statute?

What are some of the challenges that you're facing? And so here represents CMEA is divided into nine regions across the state. And here you can see a little bit of our quantitative responses and the division between success stories and challenges. With a little analysis from some of these responses to our questionnaire.

The funds have supported the creation of new visual and performing arts positions, including several areas of growth and administrative support for the arts. Gotta remember to do this.

So in multiple districts, our Members have reported that they were able to hire new personnel, including elementary arts teachers, middle school drama teachers, new music teachers, classified positions such as staff pianists and coaches. In one case in a rural district, they were able to offer music for Tk 12 for the first time in history.

And so again, these are narratives from our Members just inviting music teachers to share a little bit about, from their perspectives, how they are achieving success as a result of the statute and some of the challenges they face.

The delay on this in regards to the 19% of the statute, the funding has been used to acquiring necessary supplies, including including new instruments, music and technology, and new instructional resources. And now the other side, there have been challenges.

And what's interesting during our time here today is that we're going to have lots of areas that overloop one another. And what's nice about our time together here today in this hearing is that we get to hear it from multiple perspectives. And so some of the challenges. And again, this is feedback from our Members.

I'll go to the second bullet point there. The fears, the fears of how this money can be diverted for a variety of reasons that oftentimes aren't necessarily shared and articulated. From Administration through teachers, on special assignments, through coordinators and such.

Our teachers notice that there's a General lack of clarity on how the money is legally supposed to be allocated. And I have here so the need for centralized guidance.

One of the things that I keep hearing many times here today, and definitely something that our Members echo is that there needs to be some sort of a centralized guidance. The CMEA and the three other Arts education organizations, California Dance, California Theater, California Arts.

We feel that a position or a team in the California Department of Education would really alleviate these kinds of misnomers, these misconceptions and provide this guidance so that many of our colleagues here today, there's not a fear of doing something incorrectly for fear of penalty after this first audit is done.

So I have a couple of slides here in this incredibly large font. And this is just some qualitative feedback that we have from our Members. And so ideas like limited transparency and clarity at the site level regarding funding sources. These are from our educators, these are from our teachers in classrooms.

Right now, it's difficult for site educators to verify compliance with the supplement, not supplant requirement. There's many questions that have happened here over the course of the afternoon that I was jotting down notes that I'd be more than happy to. To provide some additional guidance. So administrative roadblocks and confusion how.

How local school districts and administrations are managing the funds as a result of. Not that. Not having the transparency. There's. There's a sense. There's a sense that. And not having a clear lines of communication as a result of what some educators might perceive as supplanting.

There's just not real communication for funds being held or unspent by the district when there's a clear need to supplement the lack of transparency. Transparency and a General bureaucratic obstacles to access or utilize the money. So again, we see here that there is a lack of consistency from district to district.

There was a comment made by our colleagues at Wested that some legal team from a district A will have different advice from some legal team from district B. And our educators, particularly our arts educators across the state, they're sharing these experiences and kind of left with okay, well then what's the.

So CMEA's responsibility in all this was we've collected this information. We also, on our website, we know very well that our teachers, CMEA is not the source that they answer to. They answer to the Department of Education.

So what we tried to do as well with some of this feedback is we'd align some of the FAQs off the California Department of Education Prop 28 site, would align some of the FAQs so that they can have a sense of clarity that's coming straight from the California Department of Education.

There's no educating district admin or site admin on how Prop 28 works and how to use it. That's a strong word. They are gatekeepers. Prop 28 money is going to waste or is being used and taken by admin for other purposes.

That's a line that I keep hearing over and over again, is that our administrators are using Prop 28 funds for purposes that were not intended by the statute, putting money into the hands of those who don't know how to use it. I give a QR code here. This is our resource page off of our CMEA website.

The form sits right there as of it's been going for several years. I wanted to collect the feedback that has been kind of relevant in the last four months because as we all know, the perception about the statute continues to evolve and, and change. So that's my report from the California Music Educators Association. Thank you.

Great. Thank you all. I'll begin with any Member comments, questions. Mr. Maratucci, thank you.

Let me start my notes here. First of all, Superintendent Baker, before I start my questions, I. I just want to acknowledge, you know, your 34 year career with the Long Beach Unified School District. You know, first as a teacher, principal, and then now as superintendent, District's first female superintendent.

And I had a chance to visit Long Beach Unified and see many of your extremely successful programs as one of the most successful large urban school districts in the state of California. I just want to thank you for your many years of service. I wanted to ask you some of the questions that we asked the previous panel.

I mean, it sounds like you have effectively and aggressively used the proposition 28 funds to expand arts education in an equitable manner. But you must talk to superintendents or hear what's happening in other school districts. Do you have any insight as to why districts would be choosing to return Prop 28 funds rather than.

Rather than spending it like Long Beach Unified has been spending?

Yeah, I mean, I think the challenges that have been expressed today are what is shared in superintendent circles, the variation of being able to staff positions internally, how to effectively use the money. So the coordinator and I heard this spoken earlier.

The opportunity to have a district visual and performing arts coordinator has been very important to our work. She has led. She led the equity audit of the Department across schools, which helped us to have a baseline to build from.

So I think everything that you've heard today is there's a lot of truth in what has been shared, which some of it, I think can be expected when something is in the first phase of implementation. It allows for a lot of growth. We have to get something started before we can even improve upon it.

So I think it's wonderful to have the opportunity to share some of the successes, but also the challenges today. A couple of examples that I was thinking about. While overall our implementation has been very strong, we make note and challenges related to supplement versus supplant in the experience that we have with significant declining enrollment.

So we'll ask ourselves from our baseline just to make it really simple. If a school has gone from 700 students over a few years to 490 students, the standards for staffing that school will change from a base level.

We'll then have to ask ourselves, how do we apply the supplement factor for Prop 28 if we change how we staff schools? And so it will cause us to be asking the supplement and supplant question similarly.

And this is not about staffing, but when I think about some of the future challenges, the 80%, 20% comes into play for us as we have significantly expanded instruments and purchased instruments. Well, instruments actually have a life cycle to them. They are expensive to fix.

In fact, I think from memory we spend about half a million dollars a year in fixing instruments in Long Beach Unified. That doesn't include replacement costs. So we'll also have to get into, you know, what are we then from a base perspective, funding and consider what that means in terms of supplement at the time.

So we have plenty of challenges even though we have had a very strong implementation effort. And I also didn't mention this earlier, but just credit to the arts community that surrounds us in Long Beach because we have good partnerships, thought partnerships, as well as expertise and many who have contributed to us having arts prior to Prop 28.

So I hope that gives a little insight to what you're asking.

Well, I just want to, you know, try to take advantage of your running, you know, one of the biggest school districts in the state. I mean, you have the funds. I mean, you chose to like spend, you know, aggressively spend the funds appropriately.

Even with the lack of clarity with, with Proposition 28, I mean, you know, did you have, did you share some of the concerns that were discussed in the previous panel about getting audited, about being found to be out of compliance? I mean, why, why, why did that not hold you back?

Well, I think that our team is committed to a lot of internal capacity building, which means challenging one another really looking at the documents that do exist and then operating with that in mind.

Perhaps it is a bit of risk taking that a large urban district can take, should there be an audit, finding that we would have to pay back, it would maybe not land as bad as it would for a small district with a smaller budget.

That said, we are living in a very tenuous space in Long Beach Unified as we have significant deficit spending and fully funded Prop 28, fully funded, expanded learning opportunities programming and have to hold those things as we reduce our overall spending.

And so we're thankful that we have continued Prop 28 funding and DLLP and the challenge of helping our community to understand why something continues to be fully funded and even expanded while something else is actually being significantly reduced at the same time.

But I do believe that we, one of our, one aspect of our philosophy is that we build internal capacity, use as many of the resources as we can. And I'm sure our team in the early days was making a lot of phone calls to get as clear as possible.

And then perhaps there was a margin of risk that we were able to take knowing that we could make a course correction should we need to make a course correction.

Okay. And then in your presentation you talked about, I think you hired 56 arts and music educators certificated, along with a.

Number of classified instructional coaches.

Okay. Yes. And so, I mean, what, what were, what were your biggest challenges in scaling up that workforce in a short period of time?

I think our biggest success was starting before all the districts around us in the region were getting started, looking to our partners in Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Dominguez, right away getting at the table and recruiting as quickly as we could.

And again, that may be a factor for a large urban district that we have internal capacity to get right out there, get with our partners and seek, seek, recruit teachers. We also have a lot of teachers that do their student teaching in Long Beach Unified School District.

And so we maintain contact with those, those teachers and have relationship with them. And I think that also allowed us to hire in many of those who had done student teaching in our district. So building their capacity and then an opportunity for them to come back and be our employees.

Okay, maybe I'll turn it over and.

Follow up with any, any other Member questions or comments. So I appreciate really good overview and both from certainly a major urban and also our rural communities district, seeing the positive effect that these funds are happening in your work to be able to best your abilities, fully implement those.

I know it's a proportional, you know, benefit to, I think, the various communities that we serve. I'm wondering maybe starting with Dr. Baker and is there any specific areas that, you know, you Mentioned you had music and arts and other programs as well, being as large as you are. But has, you know, there been new.

What areas of new growth have you seen? I guess that, you know, sort of have been available that wouldn't be there today?

I think specifically, and I named this as moving from elementary from what I think of as exploration, mostly upper grade students that are experimenting with choral and instrumental music to having arts dance and theater across elementary schools. Those have been significant growth in those areas. And then some of those also strengthened in our secondary schools.

And then along with that is the introduction of many cultural aspects of art. So ballet folklorico, not just what might be considered traditional dance, hip hop, not just what might be considered traditional dance. So more below the surface than just the broad areas.

But definitely art, dance and theater have been largely expanded and then just more at the secondary level, more strategic pathways as part of our arts programming.

That's great. And for some of the new hires that you've made, a lot of credentialed and also classified staff, are you finding any attraction from out of state teacher opportunities or are these new positions, I guess new, new hire set from. From our community?

That's a good question. I actually don't have an answer to that. How many of them I do know I can, I can share that we do most of our hiring from the region. So I wouldn't, I don't know the answer to that.

Knowing, knowing that, you know, somebody may out there that would otherwise be qualified. But you know, all of a sudden there's new funding. So we're creating these positions and now somebody has to take the time to go get certified, go get credentialed, you know, go get prepared for these. And Dr. Zollinger, I can take that.

So what I wanted to share as a result of our work together, Assemblymember Miratsucci on AB 2473, which was about a year and a half ago.

So one of the benefits that came out of that piece of legislation is that for teachers coming in from out of state, we waived a lot of the, quite frankly, barriers that existed for accepting teachers from outside of the state. So California began to recognize out of state credentials.

As a result of that, there were a few more really interesting pieces that I think would address your question about credentialing is that any single or multiple subject credential holder can as a result of this, can merely.

Can not merely, but they can add an arts supplement to the existing credential, fast tracking their way to be able to teach, for instance, elementary Arts, music, drama and dance. And so the out of state things were waived.

And then being able to get a credential, the existing methods that are currently exist, that if we're looking at trying to get more teachers, as There was a 5,800 number here a minute ago, any of the existing methods currently exist.

This is the subject matter tests, the CSATs, coursework or transcript review as a result of another Assembly Bill, Assembly Bill 130, which said this was passed in 2021, which says that any potential credential person with a bachelor's degree in the subject they're teaching.

And so what's interesting going around right now is that the subject matter competency piece, there are many arts undergrad programs that currently exist with many degree many course programs with a lot of degrees. Assembly Bill 130 said all you need is a bachelor's in the subject.

So for us, a bachelor of arts in music that satisfies subject matter competency, thus removing one up to two semesters for undergraduates to be able to enter the credential program. So I just wanted to address some of the credential pieces that came out as a result of our work together in Assembly Bill 130.

Great. Thank you. Any maybe for Ms. Sakima district work with nonprofit organizations that, you know, have been able to help, you know, stay qualified within, you know, that 8020 split. But how are they adding value, I guess, with those relationships?

Well, as you might imagine in rural Northern California, the number of organizations of that type are somewhat limited. That being said, I can speak, for example, the Museum, Museum of Northern California Arts that it's located in Chico is definitely a partner with us.

And they provide mobile vans that go out to schools and you know, districts can take advantage of that with their arts instruction that they have to offer. That being said, that still does not always satisfy the letter of Proposition 28. And so I think there continue to be struggles.

But apologies in advance for the bad pun, but we have gotten very creative up there about finding ways to provide these great opportunities for kids. And the proximity of Chico State University has certainly helped. We appreciate their support as well and their efforts to help us find teachers for the arts.

And speaking as someone who does have a supplemental credential in music and an undergraduate degree in dramatic art, this is near and dear to my heart. And so we are always looking, looking for partners to have those conversations and to find ways to enrich the lives of our kids.

And being able to have some flexibility on an ongoing basis is really the key to that.

That's great. Not a bad pun at all. It's very, very appropriate.

For instance, here in Sacramento, we have a nonprofit called Friends of Sacramento Arts. It's right here. And they are a partner that works. Not see me, but just pejoratively, they're a partner that. That works to bridge the teaching artists that are available here and the possibility of earning a CTE credential. That was part. That was.

One of our friends from Wested talked about this. A CTE credential is significantly less time. The point that I'm trying to make here, too, is that. That we want to. I realize there's an arts teacher shortage. There's a. There's a teacher shortage. And so.

And so there are existing pathways and there are credentials because we want to remain. We want to have standard. We want to remain rigor for this teacher preparation.

And there are many friends of Sacramento works together to help artists that sing at the Sackville and Opera or that play in this group or that there's a quick process by which you can become credentialed and you could become a teacher as a result of the statute in Proposition 28.

Thank you very much, Senator Mertucci, Follow up.

Thank you. On the issue of.

Following on the issue of teacher shortage, there's going to be some legislation this year to explore the issue of the proper role of our California State universities versus our community colleges in terms of the fact that we have a lot more community colleges than we have Cal State University campuses and that community colleges can provide more access and more affordability.

I wanted to hear both from Superintendent Sakuma as well as Mr. Zollinger. It seems to me like if people that come from rural communities can get their teacher credential closer to home, they would be more likely to stay closer to their communities that they grew up in and become the art and music teachers in these underserved communities.

At the same time, Mr. Zillinger, you correctly point out that we need to make sure that we maintain standards, make sure that we don't compromise the teaching preparation process involved in teacher credentialing.

So, yeah, I want to hear from both of your thoughts on this general idea of, you know, perhaps our California State University is working in collaboration with our local community colleges to provide greater teacher credentialing opportunities through local community colleges.

Thank you very much for the question. So one of the things, just to give some perspective, of the nine counties that make up Region two that I represent, in that space, we have Chico State and we have two community Colleges.

And for my colleagues who have community Members, say up in Modoc County, it's still a very long distance. And so finding creative ways for them to be in attendance and have a presence remains challenging. But I definitely support this idea that they could access coursework, especially while they're still undergrads, through their community colleges could be powerful.

And I know I can speak to an incredible music teacher that we have at Butte College, for example. He's a longtime member of CMEA. I know Ryan well and he's outstanding. They're so fortunate to have a music educator of that caliber. So I have a lot of confidence that, that with good collaboration, that that could certainly happen.

Before I. Before I. I know Ryan really will. Before I came to Sacramento State, I was a lecturer at Cal State East Bay. And right at the time I was working there, I was supervising student teachers.

Cal State East Bay, to my knowledge, so I'm not going to come out definite, to my knowledge, is the only CSU in this state that has an online teaching credential program. And the students I was supervising, I was living in the East Bay, near Berkeley, but the student teachers I was supervising were across the state.

They were from Southern California, they were in Northern California. And that model, that was a one year credential program, one year credential program. It's through a Cal State University system. So the expenses are lower than it would be for something like national or Chapman. And to your point about.

I mean, I had people come up to me as a CMEA representative. Someone came out to me, I was meeting them in Los Angeles and they say I work between Santa Maria and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And this program's great because then I don't have to drive three hours for a credential class up at Cal Poly.

I can do this credential program online. And it's a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous summer to summer. And then that not only can they do their student teaching in the community for which they live, they stay in the community for which they live and become credentialed teachers. To your point about.

So I think that's one of the questions I had years ago, not understanding the silo effect that we oftentimes find ourselves in in higher ed. I'll be the biggest critique of higher ed here is that why aren't more CSU's doing this?

Why don't we, why, why are we not coming together to, to have a CSU system that addresses that very issue to your point about community colleges, there are these mechanisms called articulation agreements. And so a student can take the lower division units at a community college and then so our guests can see us theoretically those trends.

Well, the arts are one of the most difficult subjects in a four year institution. For those credits to transfer, it's kind of like AP tests. You can take the AP test. That doesn't mean, it doesn't guarantee you that you're going to like test out of that class when you get to college. The same is true.

And I can speak to my discipline. The same is true with music. And so a committed effort to actually reinstate some of the articulation agreements that have expired between community colleges and four year institutions. Yes. So that we can not just arts educators, but we can have undergraduates move through.

I'm a community college person, I went to a community college. We can have them move through an undergraduate degree in four years. That's the, that's the motto at SAC State 4 and 4. So I hope that, I hope that helps.

And at the risk of having offended my colleagues, I do need to self correct that. We also have Lassen College as well as River College in my region.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Assembly Member Gonzalez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you. I sit on not only the arts, entertainment, sports and tourism, but I'm vice chair of Veterans and Military Affairs. We were talking about recently about credentialing. One of the challenges that I still see. Let me backtrack a little bit. Former woodwind clarinet player. Very nice.

All right, so I'm a friend. One of the challenges that we're seeing from a, from a teacher credentialing shortage in the military community that's still happening today is their, their ability to bring their credentialing from another state into California. So my question to you is, have you seen that? Have you heard that? And.

Because we get a lot of military families here in California, what do you think could be a solution to this issue?

We addressed it. CMEA worked with Assemblymember Merrit Tsuchi on an Assembly Bill 2473. And as a result it was interesting. We opposed it at first and then through the legislative process, we took a support position as a result of that Bill there. And I can't cite the specifics, but I believe that we relaxed.

Relaxed out of state credentials. Who are people who are coming to California? It used to be really bad. It was. Well, you don't the out of state credential. I'm fully credentialed in Wisconsin and for whatever reason people moved to California. Well, you're going to need to do this.

They would go to a university, they would get their transcripts analyzed. And then that person, let's take music. That person would say, well, you need this course. You need this course. And California is unique. California is one of the most unique states for all of the best reasons.

But our undergraduates in the arts or any teaching subject, they graduate with an undergraduate degree and there's an extra year for credentialing. So it's like I explain to my students, it's like this is the undergraduate universe and this is the college of ED universe. Right.

So what was happening was that the directed by the cctc, the commission, they would evaluate these credentials and presumably they would say, you need X amount of coursework in order to be credentialed in California. And we're talking preliminary credentialed.

So as a result of our work together on that Assembly Bill, those restrictions, I believe have been, have been relaxed. They're the California Department. The CCTC is recognizing out of state credentials in a way that they did not about, about 16 months ago.

That, that's something I'll look into, especially with, with Marisucci, because I'm still getting calls about that to date. So I'll work offline and, and see how we can shore up the gap. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you. Okay. See no other Member comments. I really want to thank you for your preparation and participation here today. A lot of good information that we can build from. And I want to thank you again for being with us.

Thank you. Thank you all.

Thank you. So for everyone here, I want to thank all of our participants. For today's meeting. We are moving into a portion of the agenda where we invite public comment. The microphone up here towards the rail will be open.

And if any members of the public wish to approach and form a align, you'll be welcome to address the Committee. I think given the time that we have right now and the number of people in the room, you know, one to two minutes should be fine. At your discretion.

Anybody may go first. I see a few people positioned.

There you go. You'll start the, you'll start the line.

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Barbara Power. I call myself a traveling educator. I just want to give you a little bit of overview just on why I felt it was very important to be here today. I'm actually a mother of five. I've lived in California 27 years in Fresno.

I have been a Fresno substitute teacher for some years, since 2017. I'm a Georgetown University graduate, first generation Cuban American from Palm Beach County, Florida. And I worked in Florida, actually in Tallahassee, quite a bit of international tourism before coming to California.

What I wanted to share with you today and what I felt I learned a lot from this panel today. Also, shout out to Dr. Misty her, who also has more than 30 years of experience. She is our first woman Fresno Unified School District superintendent and first mind superintendent.

Very happy to have worked under her leadership, but very happy to come back to Fresno to find after being retired, that she was promoted in that position. And also with Clovis Unified School District and Central Unified, I've had an opportunity with raising my five children to be able to see the districts and how they work.

My concern as a traveling educator and also choosing to be a substitute teacher had everything to do with having my bachelor's degree in International affairs and feeling like even though I was going for a Master's in multilingual and multicultural education, I stopped that because it did give me an opportunity to teach the grade level that I was really interested in, and that was third grade.

Third and fourth grade is my favorite, favorite level. And so I was very excited to be a substitute teacher and be able to say that I've actually taught every grade level. When the pandemic happened, though, I can tell you I probably was the last teacher in Fresno Unified to even know that we.

We weren't going to have school the next day. I was preparing so much for that third grade class. And so when I got the news of that, I immediately started teaching online. I started teaching through Facebook and creating my own means to do that.

And I want to speak about parents also who homeschool and who are losing their belief in our public school system. So we have so many gaps.

And to hear that even as a grant writer, once having an opportunity to do something for my children's local school and them not having the staff to go forward, it was just a $3,000 target grant, but I took the initiative to write it and they had to send the money back.

So to hear you say that about money being sent back, I do want to say today that I hope that we can identify those districts that are in their third year and that as professionals, we can be given notice so that we can come forward and offer some things. As a personal visual artist, I find that.

Oh, my time limit, Right? Thank you. It's a little bit more than that. But thank you so much for Just giving us information today. Appreciate your comments.

Good afternoon. Dan Merwin, on behalf of the California School Boards Association, we would just echo that. While we really support this program, there are a number of implementation concerns that you've heard today. The challenges of smalls, the challenges of rurals, really the lack of clarity in the statute itself around what is supplement, not supplant.

I've been in a number of conversations where there's been discussions of should that include not just one time funding from the state, but what about one time funding from your local community pta? Maybe somebody passes and wills a certain amount of funding for a new building, new instruments, et cetera.

That creates some significant challenges, particularly when a lot of schools are facing declining enrollment. And if you have to maintain those investments at say a dollar basis versus a per ADA basis, what does that look like?

And then that creates that kind of confusion and concern for a number of LEAs when there is an audit process attached to this on top of an already pretty extensive compliance burden. So I think those are just things that we're still working through as a community.

Things that sounds like there might be some legislation forthcoming to clarify, but just challenges we'll continue to face in the meantime. Thank you.

I'm short, so I have to pull this down. Hi, thank you so much to the Assembly Members who are here today for listening to the arts community and for caring so much about arts education.

And thank you to all of the presenters who I know are working really hard in their communities to make sure that Prop 28 funds are implemented equitably. My name is Ricky Abilez. I am the Program Director at Create California.

But I wanted to speak today as a former educator, rightfully so, you heard today that we should lean on teaching artists and their expertise and get them credentialed so they can enter the classroom. And I want to share a little bit about why that's been so difficult.

I had my bachelor's degree in theater arts, my master's degree in education policy. I worked for nonprofit organization in the San Gabriel Valley for five years, was hired as a teaching artist to come in and train full time teachers on culturally responsive lesson plans.

And I never thought credentialing was something I wanted to go do because one, it's expensive, two, it takes a lot of times. I already had two degrees. Why would I go do that? The only reason I did is because the California School of the Arts, San Gabriel Valley told me they would pay for my credential.

They would pay for my time spent learning while I was getting my credential, and I could teach while I was pursuing the credential. And it was a CTE credential through the Orange County Office of Education.

And I bring all of that up because even so, even once I got my credential, I was still seen as not a real teacher with all that experience, all that education, not a real teacher. And so I wanted to bring that to light because.

Because I think so often we lean on teaching artists without recognizing their level of expertise. And we also lean on nonprofits. And I do want to say that nonprofits have suffered under Prop 28 because a lot of their partnerships have ended. And that's mainly a result because of the confusion around the law.

And so providing clarity won't only support districts, it'll support nonprofits in their pursuit to serve students as they have been before Prop 28 was implemented. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Christopher Powell, and actually I live in Fresno. I just want to let you know I'm a byproduct of visual arts education. Our first voice, the first way we create is with our voice. Choir. I'm in a choir today.

I was a choir when I was five years old, and I went back to it, Fresno. If I can express anything, I'm a degreed electrical engineer. Okay. I do the arts also, but I have no credential or anything. But I participate in children's theater.

If you go to Fresno and look for the Cynthia Merrill School of Performing Arts, that is an excellent resource. That woman has been doing this for 40 years, and right now, I'm 66 years old. I'm a senior. The senior community. I mean, consider that a resource because we have skills that these young people can utilize. We're not.

We are. I guess we have that experiential experience. So I say, if you will, we don't have to be contracted. Some of us don't even need to be paid. It's the thing of time and sharing with young people. That's what we want to do.

So not just with our grandchildren, with all children and children, like hanging out with old people. You know what my little thing is? I juggle. Is that an artist? I don't know. But you know what? It brings smiles. And the thing is, it teaches physics. I mean, we can do the arts and science. They're one.

Okay, I'm a renaissance man. Why can't we combine the mathematics of the parabola with the apex of a juggling ball? I mean, and catching and all these other things. Consider the senior Community, we are a resource. And the thing is, a lot of it, like I said, has nothing to do with money.

It's really time in our community. I want to thank you for the opportunity. And I'm also a tutor. So you teachers out there, you teach and I just kind of translate the message so they can get the job done. And I love all you guys for taking the time to do this. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon. Abe Flores, I'm with Create California. First, I want to thank you all. For your attention to this matter, all the work you do for our children. I just want to reiterate the importance. Of reliable, valid and comprehensive data on. K12 arts education courses and participation, ideally through CalPads and the California Dashboard.

That's the only way we're really going. To know if we're really realizing the promise of Prop 28 and serving all of our kids equitably and look forward. To exploring these ideas and working with. You all and seeing how we can. Make that a reality. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Danae Pruner. I am a parent and a PTO treasurer. Thank you for having me. I. Sorry, I've never spoken one of these before. I'm a little bit nervous.

Say what you got to say.

Okay. So I, you know, I'm learning about all this stuff in real time as a PTO treasurer and I've seen in the, in the language that the, for the 80% of funds to be hired for certificated or classified employees.

But in our situation with the Teachers Union, they have blocked us from hiring anybody that's not fully credentialed working with the district. So in our situation, our children at our school site have not had any arts instruction for the entire year to last year. They did. So for our situation, Art has been taken away from our children.

So we're looking for a little more guidance between how this is going to work between the teachers unions and with, I don't know, all the correct terms, but maybe a little more guidance and clarity with that going forward. So thank you. I appreciate your time.

Great. Thanks for being here. Okay. See no other members of the public wishing to address the Committee, the two committees. I do want to thank our Committee consultants for both of these committees for all the preparation. I think we got some excellent testimony here today as well. So really appreciate your preparation for this hearing.

It's important that we have an overview of these important voter approved resources and that we are monitoring that going forward for anything that we need to do to make the outcomes even better. So I want to thank everybody and the public here for attending here today. And this will conclude our hearing.