A Timely Opportunity for Arts Education
The American Rescue Plan Act
with Jamie Kasper, Alex Nock, Aileen Ma, and Nadia Elokdah
On May 6, 2021, GIA published “Getting Equitable Access to Arts Education: Understanding the American Rescue Plan Act” in which we discussed the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act or ARP, which is a $1.9 trillion package in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Schools re-opening safely has been a broad area of debate and concern, so there is much interest in how this federal funding should be allocated. The Department of Education outlined that, of the more than $122 billion allocated for K-12 schools, at least 90% of funds are required to be used by State Education Agencies (SEAs) to make subgrants to Local Educational Agencies (LEAs). These funds are intended to help school districts recover from the covid-19 pandemic, sustain safe operations, and support students. They can also help districts move toward equitable access to the arts and strengthen enriching arts education experiences for students following a particularly challenging year plus away from in-classroom learning. We are glad to be joined by Jamie Kasper, director of Arts Education Partnership; Alex Nock, principal at Penn Hill Group; Aileen Ma, director at Penn Hill Group; and Nadia Elokdah, GIA vice president and director of Programs, to discuss the opportunity provided by the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021.
To listen to the full episode, click here.
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The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic exposed many of the nation’s vulnerabilities—health care, economic, climate, and educational disparities—and put us all on alert. While many are scrambling for solutions to return to school in safe ways, this article speaks to the need to fundamentally rethink education and consider the pandemic as an opportunity to restart, or more precisely re-set, education using a more robust and culturally centered pedagogy. This article provides examples of the new ideas that scholars and practitioners are employing to ensure academic, cultural, and social success for students who were regularly placed at risk of failure because of their racial, cultural, and socioeconomic status.
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The figures on the State Educational Agency ESSER Reservations table identify the state reservations for ESSER II and ESSER III. Note the more prescriptive and educational reservations for ESSER III.
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The Success Stories project collects submissions from organizations that highlight successful arts education programs. These stories demonstrate the benefits of arts integration across the education spectrum and promote continued collaboration and learning for individuals and organizations working toward student achievement and success.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Welcome to the podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts, a national membership association of public and private arts and culture funders. I'm Sherylynn Sealy, GIA's program manager. I'm here today with Nadia Elokdah, GIA vice president and director of programs, who will join us in conversation with our guests to discuss the opportunity provided by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (or ARP); it's a new way to resource arts education across states, districts, and schools. So welcome, Nadia.
Nadia Elokdah:
Thanks, Sherylynn.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Can you give us a bit of grounding about the American Rescue Plan Act and how the opportunity to direct federal funds to arts education arose?
Nadia Elokdah:
Absolutely. Thanks. A few weeks ago, GIA published a blog post titled "Getting Equitable Access to Arts Education: Understanding the American Rescue Plan Act," which covers a lot of this content. So go read it. But in that, we discussed the Biden administration's American Rescue Plan Act, which is a $1.9 trillion package in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Obviously, schools reopening safely has been a broad area of debate and concern. So there's much interest in how this federal funding should be allocated. The Department of Education outlined, of the more than $122 billion allocated for K-12 schools, at least 90% of funds are required to be used by the State Education Agencies to make sub-grants to Local Education Agencies. These funds are intended to help school districts recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, sustain safe operations, and to support students. It can also help districts move toward equitable access to the arts, which we care about a lot, and strengthen enriching arts education experiences for students following a particularly challenging year-plus away from in-classroom learning.
Nadia Elokdah:
GIA's Arts Education Funders Coalition, a group that meets twice per month to research, develop and promote arts education, policy, and strategy, we met recently to discuss what arts education funders could do with this unprecedented opportunity and access to $41 billion still available. We want to share with the GIA community today some of that conversation, with some of our members, and discuss what funders can do to support equitable arts education.
Sherylynn Sealy:
All right. Thank you, Nadia. That was incredibly helpful grounding.
Nadia Elokdah:
Happy to help!
Sherylynn Sealy:
…yeah, yes, and I think we can dive right in. So we are glad to be joined by Jamie Kasper, director of Arts Education Partnership, Alex Nock, principal at Penn Hill Group, and Aileen Ma, director at Penn Hill Group. And so we welcome all of you, and thank you for joining us today.
Aileen Ma:
Happy to!
Jamie Kasper:
Hi there!
Alex Nock:
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Awesome. All right, well, first question. And this one will actually go to you, Aileen, if you can kick us off. What is the American Rescue Plan or ARP?
Aileen Ma:
Yeah, so the American Rescue Plan is the latest COVID-19 relief legislation that passed through Congress and was signed by President Biden. And within that, there is a huge amount of funding I think, as Nadia just alluded to, for what is called the ESSER fund, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. So, that funding pot has about $122 billion. You heard me right, that's billion. So it's a huge, huge amount of money and, I mean, really unprecedented, as all COVID relief funding has been, but particularly want to punctuate and emphasize what a large amount of money this is. As Nadia has said, this amount is largely required to be provided in the form of grants to states. So this isn't largely money that's going to be going to administrative things. This is really going down to the state and local level.
Sherylynn Sealy:
All right. Great. Thank you for that, Aileen. Alex, can you just add on to that and let us know when the Department of Ed released guidance on state plans and when they're due?
Alex Nock:
Hey, thanks, Sherylynn, and thanks for having us here. So first, the department just a few weeks ago actually released guidance on this. What they did, actually a couple of months ago when the ARP just passed, is they gave states immediately two-thirds of this $122 billion. But they said, "Hold on a second. The actual application for the remaining third is coming." Literally, just a couple of weeks ago they released it, and it really went through all the parameters that states have to look at in terms of applying for that remaining one-third of money, which kind of sounds small when you talk about one third, but when you think about it, it's one-third of $122 billion, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Yes, (laughter) it's no big deal.
Alex Nock:
Right, so it's no big deal at all. That's right. So states have until June 7th to submit their applications. Then there's also a requirement in what the feds put out to have states also do applications to school districts so they can get their share of dollars, like Aileen was saying, this money goes from states down to the local level.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Okay. That's great. June 7th is very close. So everyone listening, keep that in mind. All right. So what's important to consider with the opportunity to engage with states and school districts to leverage funding for arts education?
Alex Nock:
So the most important thing about what this opportunity means is, to go back to what Aileen said, Sherylynn, which was, this is $122 billion. This is unprecedented amounts of federal dollars going down to states, with 90% of it going down to the school district level. So school districts are going to get millions of dollars, some hundreds of millions of dollars if you're talking about some of the bigger ones. This is a huge, unprecedented amount of money that's going to come down that right now isn't encumbered.
Alex Nock:
Yes, certainly the idea is that school districts are supposed to use it to help recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and learning loss, we're going to talk about that a little bit later, but it's not tied to a particular use of funds out there right now. It's not channeled to an afterschool program or channeled to teacher training or something like that. Literally, school districts get to say, "All right. What do we need to do to come back from COVID-19?" As Nadia kind of laid out in the early part of this, the arts and arts education are a critical part of what we would hope students were getting before the pandemic, and we certainly want them to get it after. And what can be done to make sure that folks engage on this so they can maximize the use of these resources in this way?
Nadia Elokdah:
I think, Jamie, I'd love your thoughts on this too, because in our AEFC meetings we talk a lot about some of the challenges that different arts courses or arts classes are facing. A visual arts class is so different than a choral class, for example. But simultaneously, when we talk about this in terms of…what is it? …whole-, full-rounded education? I forget the terms, Alex, and I-
Jamie Kasper:
Well-rounded education!
Nadia Elokdah:
Well-rounded, yeah! There's also the idea that well-rounded education means we need arts education. It's like, this is a part of full, well-rounded education that is a part of the ways that we learn math and that we learn science and all those kinds of things. I would love to hear from your perspective, Jamie, how this comes up in things that you're advocating around.
Jamie Kasper:
Yeah, that's great. Well, shout out to the National Association for Music Education that has published a really comprehensive toolkit around how schools and districts can use these funds specifically to support music education, but there are definitely things that apply to all the art forms. Nadia, you were talking about some of the things that are really specific to arts courses. Not many people are thinking about, how do we safely share art supplies? Paintbrushes, paint, pencils, markers, crayons. How do we do that in a classroom setting? How do we push liters and liters and liters of air through our vocal cords and through our lungs and put them out into the room safely like we do in a music classroom? How do we dance safely with a partner when we need to be within three feet of them? These are all things that our arts teachers and our arts administrators are trying to think about right now.
Jamie Kasper:
And so I mentioned the toolkit that NAfME put out. They have some very specific guidance about how we could use these funds to do those things safely, like making sure that is our classrooms are fully staffed so that you don't have to have 160 student band all in one room at the same time. But if you've got enough teachers, you can split them and offer those courses at different times. You could use these funds to buy individual art kits for students so they don't have to share art materials or so that you have enough art materials to sterilize a set while you use another set with the following class. So these are all things I think that are just really interesting arts challenges that folks necessarily aren't thinking about.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great. We're actually going to stay with you for a little bit longer, Jamie. I would love to hear your thoughts on some of the opportunity that this provides to serve subgroups of students described in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Jamie Kasper:
Yeah. Actually, Alex, can I ask you first to repeat what you said with us last week on our call about how this is really an opportunity that folks are seeing who don't necessarily work in the education community to provide pre-packaged services or things? Because I have a response to that.
Alex Nock:
Sure. So one of the things that we know is going on is because there's so much in terms of resources that are going down to school districts, obviously, this is going to attract folks that want to provide services to school districts, to people who have ideas in terms of moving different products forward. So there's going to be lots of interest in talking to school districts about what they should address, whether it be a vendor, whether it be a community-based organization. Regardless of merit or anything like that, this is a lot of resources, and folks are going to come to the table, and there's going to be a lot of competition for these resources.
Jamie Kasper:
Yeah, and then I'm thinking like a school administrator, and thinking, "What are the things I'm prioritizing to spend this money on?" One of the things that I'm thinking about is that in this very specific moment, people who are talking to administrators and other decision-makers about how they're going to use these funds may want to stress that the arts are a way to fund human-to-human interaction; because we haven't had that over the last 16 however-many months. If you use these funds, for example, to bring teaching artists into your school to work with students specifically about how to process trauma from this experience, that is meeting a whole bunch of potential school goals, right? We model what it's like to be a professional making a living in the arts. That's a goal. We are helping students process trauma. That's a goal related to social-emotional needs. We are getting human beings from our communities into the school to really connect with students in genuine ways. I think that's another goal. So, that's an opportunity that I see.
Jamie Kasper:
I also want to back out a little bit and talk about something that's been rolling around in my head. So in February of this year in the journal Equity & Excellence in Education, Gloria Ladson-Billings, who some of you may have that name in your head as something familiar, she does a lot of writing about culturally responsive teaching, she wrote an article called "I'm Here for the Hard Re-Set: Post Pandemic Pedagogy to Preserve our Culture." One of the things that stuck out to me about her article was this phrase, "Normal is where the problems reside."
Jamie Kasper:
Her whole point was we keep talking about going back to normal, and she then lays out all of the reasons why that back to normal doesn't necessarily or hasn't necessarily met the needs of our children, particularly our black children, our poor children. And at the end, she provides this recommendation that if we take this opportunity of hitting this hard reset, like we do with our computers when they're acting up, and we recenter education around children and the cultural traditions of their communities and families that we will meet the needs of subgroups of students.
Jamie Kasper:
So we're talking about student populations, particularly BIPOC students, ALAANA students, students from low-income families, students with disabilities, students for whom English is a second language, and we can go on and on. Because now those children are the center, and it's not okay. We're building the system and expecting children to fit into it. We're taking the children and saying, "How can we fit the system into what they need?"
Nadia Elokdah:
Yeah, that's super essential, and we talk about this a lot with our work with Penn Hill Group and GIA because that's really important, obviously. Centering all of our programs and all of our advocacy work around racial equity means we necessarily need to take that intersectional approach to naming the groups and the students and the communities that are…I mean, we've seen how impacted folks have been very much across racial lines, very much across disability lines. That's a really important thing that we don't forget just because we're talking about arts education. That still affects all of those students too. So I appreciate you bringing that up, Jamie.
Jamie Kasper:
Yep, yeah. Then if I think about these particular funds and what that means for how we fund a school that centers children and their communities, I think number one, we fund adults in the community to come in. So not just the teachers, but other community elders, teaching artists, others in the community who are the holders of culture, and we bring them into the school and we pay them to be an integral part of the school community. I think that's absolutely key, number one and something that is allowable under these funds.
Sherylynn Sealy:
I think that's the perfect segue into the next question. Thank you, Jamie. So there's this huge amount of flexible funding, but the question that I'm going to ask is, are there any requirements or reservations on the use of the funds?
Aileen Ma:
Yes, there is, Sherylynn. I'm going to start by saying again, this is a huge amount of money. This is about 7.5 times relative to the amount that Title 1 gets. It's a pretty big deal. It's 122 billion for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief ESSER Fund. This is a lot even compared to the 13.2 billion in the prior CARES Act ESSER Fund. It's a pretty substantial increase. So in terms of reservations and requirements of the 122 billion, off the very top there's a reservation for homeless education. That's 800 billion. Then of the remainder, there's 10%, which is about 12.2 billion, set aside for state level activities, and that's across all states. Then the rest of it, the 90%, is for LEAs, so Local Educational Agency allocations, and that's about 109.8 billion, and that's across all Local Educational Agencies.
Aileen Ma:
I want to go in really briefly too within those state and local buckets, some of the requirements there, so folks have a sense. Of the 10% for state level, and if the percentages start to get a bit much, encourage folks to just listen for the activities and the focus that seems to relate to your work because there is a lot here that we see is relating to arts education, so there is, of the state level activities, at least 5% of total ESSER funds are directed towards learning loss, and that's at the state level. Then at least 1% of funds are intended for summer enrichment. Then another 1% for comprehensive afterschool and then a small remainder for administration.
Aileen Ma:
So within that, so just to go into what some of that means, within the 5% for learning loss, it's very exciting because it specifically talks about the importance of evidence-based interventions such as summer learning, summer enrichment, extended day, comprehensive afterschool programs, interventions like that which respond to students' academic, social and emotional needs and address the disproportionate impact of COVID, especially on the very important student subgroups that Jamie has just mentioned. So in terms of funding, for example, the sort of in-person attractions that Jamie talked about, this is something that definitely fits in there. Then when it comes to the remaining amount on the local level for learning loss, that's 20%, which comes out to about 20, 21 billion. So that's a pretty big amount, and I think Alex can go into a little bit more on the flexibility here and the wide discretion on the use of funds.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Sure, that sounds great. Alex, do you want to talk a bit about that?
Alex Nock:
Sure. Aileen mentioned all those different reservations and different kind of blocks of money or different kind of uses of funds, I guess, or big picture guideposts like afterschool, like summer school, like learning loss. I think the great thing about this bill for school districts and states figuring out how to respond to COVID, the first rule is you have to fund something that is directed to response, or recovery, or prevention from the virus spreading in your school district or state. So it's really what you're doing to respond to COVID, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alex Nock:
So, again, like Jamie bringing up the issues about human to human interaction, that's a perfect thing to talk about in terms of response to COVID, right?
Sherylynn Sealy:
Right.
Alex Nock:
Because we've had some lack of human to human interaction over the past-
Sherylynn Sealy:
Really? I don't [crosstalk 00:19:38].
Alex Nock:
…year or so. I don't know. I don't know. I just thought about that. It just occurred to me. So I think really you can do almost anything. Technically, under the bill they talk about, you can do anything under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, anything under the Adult Ed Act, anything under IDEA, these big monster laws that cover major portions of what you can spend federal dollars on. But the big story here is within how you respond to COVID there's a great deal of flexibility, which it goes back to that issue that Jamie brought up that she asked me to talk a little bit about on, okay, there's going to be competition for these resources. So because of this flexibility, this is a great time to engage as an arts education local or state leader and say, "Hey, we need our share of this to make sure that we can recover from the pandemic and address those things," to address all the issues that Jamie was talking about in terms of access to the arts, especially for those subgroups that both Jamie and Aileen mentioned.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's great.
Nadia Elokdah:
Yes, yes, yes. Sorry, I needed to cheer that.
Sherylynn Sealy:
I'm glad you did.
Jamie Kasper:
Yes. I want to talk a little bit about relationships because AEP, we published six success stories about how some of our partners and affiliates responded to COVID. And when I went back to analyze those interviews and write a blog post summarizing what we learned across them, the big thing that those folks talked about that I think is really germane to this conversation about funding is that they had to lean on relationships they already had. They were in crisis mode and they didn't have the bandwidth, and others didn't have the bandwidth or time to build new relationships to move their work forward.
Jamie Kasper:
School districts and states are feeling that crunch, that same crunch right now. They've got all people on deck trying to figure out how they're going to spend these funds. They don't have time to go out and build new relationships. So our arts folks really need to be the people to step up and say, "I'm here. Hi, this is me. This is the work I do. This is how we can help your children, and these are the strategies that we have and the relationships we already have in the community to help you do that." I think that's just going to be really appreciated.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Great. All right. Thank you so much for speaking to that, Jamie. We're coming to the end of our podcast. June 7th is on all of our minds. So, Alex, can you talk about this big opportunity and what the timeline looks like?
Alex Nock:
Sure. So first, again, states have to apply for this remaining one-third by June 7th. Look, if a state submits their application on June 8th, nothing falls apart, the world doesn't come to an end, we still have the sun shining and things like that. So to your point, Sherylynn, it's a very short timeframe. So we're not entirely sure if every state will meet that deadline. But the good thing about that is if they're a little behind, that means there's more chance to engage state leaders and local leaders on this sort of stuff.
Alex Nock:
But secondly, once states get these resources, they have, through the normal course of how they would spend these resources, to the end of September 2023 to spend these dollars. So remember, we're talking about 122 billion. That's a B, not M. It's B, as Aileen was saying earlier. A lot of money. So they have a good chunk of time to spend this. There's also this other proviso that exists in education law, which automatically tacks on another year onto education grant programs. So probably they have a shot at spending these resources through September 2024.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Great.
Alex Nock:
But what this allows you to do is actually not think about, "Oh my gosh. I have to spend this money before school starts in the next school year." Sure, and there may be a need to spend a lot of money before September or August rolls around. Totally understandable. But this can also be longer-term funding that goes out over several years that actually makes a real impact, to Jamie's point earlier, about actually changing practice and changing systems in a way that drives us forward. So the magic answer to your question is September 2023 or 2024, depending on how you're looking at it. But the real story here is you have several years to spend these resources over.
Sherylynn Sealy:
All right. Do you have any last thoughts that you want to share with our listeners? Maybe you want to have a mic drop moment. You all did throughout, but if there's anything else. I don't want to leave without us doing that.
Alex Nock:
Oh, I would just want to stress one last thing. I've been saying this, but for folks that are listening, it is really so important that you use this opportunity to engage, whether it's talking to your state-level education leaders, your school district leaders, other community leaders, other folks that you work within your community around the arts. This is an unprecedented opportunity in terms of the amount of resources, especially when you think about how these resources will be used to get things running again in a new, you can't see me here, but quote, unquote, normal way.
Nadia Elokdah:
That new normal.
Alex Nock:
So I really think-
Nadia Elokdah:
That new normal we're going to redefine.
Alex Nock:
The new normal. Thank you. This is such an important opportunity, and I know everyone has a lot going on in their lives, but if even a little bit of engagement happens on this and states and school districts have to think a little more about the arts and how to incorporate it, a huge difference, especially for at-risk populations of kids, could really happen here.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Thank you, Alex. Jamie?
Jamie Kasper:
Yeah. I'm glad you went first because you actually set me up perfectly. I wanted to share something that one of our partner organizations did that I just think was so brilliant, and I think we should take their lead and learn from them. Engaging Creative Minds in South Carolina made a one-page document for every district in the state.
Sherylynn Sealy:
Nice.
Jamie Kasper:
They laid out in that one page, "Hey, this is how much money South Carolina is getting. This is how much money your individual district is getting. And here are the arts opportunities that you should think about and the people you should contact if you're interested in those." I just thought that was brilliant because, yes, it took them some time, but that information is publicly available. If you haven't looked yet, I shortened the URL so that everybody could access it. If you go to tinyurl.com/essertables, so E-S-S-E-R tables, you can look up every state and every district's allocation out of these funds. And they used that information to personalize this for all of the districts in the state. Just brilliant.
Sherylynn Sealy:
That's awesome. Yes. And we will make sure you listeners have this link, so you can find it in the description. Aileen, any final words or thoughts?
Aileen Ma:
Yeah. Nothing to add, except I really hope that we have another podcast where we're actually getting to listen to the experiences and success stories of some great organizations who've hopefully been able to take advantage of this opportunity and really start building the case and being able to advance arts education in an equitable way. So looking forward to that, and I know that's going to happen. So thanks again for having us.
Nadia Elokdah:
[crosstalk 00:26:58].
Sherylynn Sealy:
Thanks, Aileen. Yes. Thank you. And for all of you listening, Aileen specially asked you for success stories. So send them our way so we can have our follow-up podcast. And with that, I want to extend an extra special thank you to Nadia Elokdah, Aileen Ma, Alex Nock, and Jamie Kasper for joining us today for this really awesome podcast. June 7th is around the corner. So for everyone listening, I hope that you are getting excited to reimagine arts education in your own communities after listening to this podcast.
Sherylynn Sealy:
We look forward to continuing these conversations, so be sure to tune in to other episodes of the GIA podcast series, and be sure to follow us on Facebook at GIArts, Twitter @GIArts, and Instagram @grantmakersinthearts. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me, Sherylynn Sealy, at sherylynn@giarts.org. Thanks so much for listening.
