Reacp: Arts education a struggle in Providence schools, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

PROVIDENCE — Katharina Shroeter has her hands full. She divides her time between two elementary schools, Martin Luther King Jr. and Reservoir Avenue. Between them, she teaches art to 700 students.

Shroeter, however, has a better deal than many of her elementary school colleagues, who see between 900 and 1,000 students a week. (Middle school teachers see 260 students a week while high school teachers have 130 students). Still, this veteran teacher is stymied. With classes lasting only 30 minutes, she said students barely have time to get started on a project before it is time to clean up.

“It’s extremely frustrating,” she said. “They are not getting a lot of painting. We used to have ceramics. We have a kiln at Martin Luther King. But there isn’t enough time to set up.”

There have been cutbacks in art and music instruction since the first round of budget shortfalls in 2002. In December 2006, Peter McWalters, the state education commissioner, ruled that the Providence schools were in violation of their basic education plan and ordered the district to restore art and music programs.

In his letter, McWalters criticized Providence for not providing a comprehensive program of art instruction, including separate facilities for the creation, storage and display of arts work, supplies and materials. There is no evidence, he said, that the city’s high schools have access to the kinds of courses that provide in-depth work in art history, criticism and career education required by the basic education plan.

Although McWalters acknowledged that the school district has dealt with several years of budget cuts that resulted in the loss of many art and music teachers, he also said that budget constraints were no excuse for not meeting the education plan.

In response, Supt. Donnie Evans submitted plans to restore the arts. However, in a Feb 8 letter to the Providence Teachers Union, McWalters said that the district is still not complying with the basic education plan.

Despite his earlier comments, McWalters said that he was not going to demand compliance because the district “at this time does not have the adequacy of resources to meet these requirements, especially in small themed high schools.”

“Given the complexity of the issues faced by the [school district] in meeting the basic education plan,” he said, “we acknowledge that the [district] is not in compliance with the [basic education plan].”

Since the state Department of Education has been asked to revise the state’s basic education plan, McWalters, in his letter to the union, said that it doesn’t make sense to launch any further investigation into the district’s fine arts offerings.

Meanwhile, art teachers are trying to do more with less. Shroeter said she is fortunate to work at King Elementary because the school has a large, well-stocked art room, thanks in large part to the generosity of the Parent Teacher Organization and retired teachers. At the Reservoir Avenue School, however, the supplies are depleted. Last year, she said, the school was left with little else than crayons and paper.

“This is my 13th year of teaching,” Shroeter said. “When I first started, we had hour-long blocks with the same children. We had two teachers at Carl Lauro Elementary School. We had art clubs. And we had all the arts supplies we needed.”

Martin Luther King is fortunate in other respects. The East Side school also offers art enrichment — smaller, project-based classes for students who are either gifted in art or struggling in core subjects such as English and math. The school also excludes art and music teachers from lunchroom duty in recognition of their heavy teaching schedules, according to Principal Michael Lazzareschi.

“We’re really the exception to the rule,” he said. “We have an after-school program funded by the PTO. Parents [who] play instruments have taught pieces of the music class.”

But even at King, Lazzareschi said that it is difficult to squeeze arts classes into the schedule because of the increasing emphasis on math and literacy instruction.

Even the district agrees that students are getting shortchanged when it comes to the arts. Earnest Cox, administrator of advanced academics and fine arts, said art classes are not long enough and added that it is the “ultimate goal of the district that art and music classes have the same amount of time as other courses.”

Elementary students receive either 30 minutes a week or one hour every two weeks. At the middle and high school levels, art classes last 55 minutes except at schools with a block schedule, in which case students may have 90 minutes of art.

Not every teacher has to split time between schools, however. Cox said that elementary schools with more than 900 students have a full-time art instructor as do middle schools. Every high school has at least one art teacher, except the Providence Academy of International Studies, which offers dance instead of art.

Cox also acknowledged that school supplies, in general, are limited because of budget restraints, adding that art teachers have a limited amount of money to buy materials. The district, however, is looking into grants to support art education.

In response to McWalters’ order, Cox said the district has taken some steps to provide more art and music offerings:

•Art and music have been restored to every middle school.

•The new Adelaide Avenue High School has an additional art teacher as well as a music teacher.

•And the district is working on schedules to make sure that elementary school children receive an hour of art and music instruction every other week.

Meanwhile, Shroeter tries to connect her art classes with what colleagues are teaching in other subjects. If a fourth-grade teacher is doing a unit on ancient cultures, then she will teach a related class on hieroglyphics.

Still, it isn’t easy to carve out time to plan assignments with other teachers.

“You end up exhausted by the end of the day,” she said. “Mondays, I take a nap. Young kids have so much energy.”