This piano student, who just turned age 6, is the Community School of Music and Art's youngest-ever Merit Scholarship student. The Program is making grants to make sure that every California public school student receives a quality arts education.

Years of budget cuts have decimated arts education in California public schools. In response, the Hewlett Foundation has made a series of grants totaling more than $7 million as part of an exploratory initiative to encourage the state to follow its own guidelines. Those guidelines call for every public school student, kindergarten through high school, to receive education in music, theater, dance, and the visual arts.

The Foundation now plans to broaden this initiative into a comprehensive, 10-year commitment to bring arts education to all of the state's 6.2 million public school students. The work, a joint effort of the Foundation's Performing Arts and Education programs, takes a variety of forms:
 
Supporting research to define the scope and scale of the problem
The Foundation funded a series of reports, beginning with "An Unfinished Canvas," which identified the current state of arts education in California public schools. Five additional reports outline obstacles to quality arts education.

Advocating increased support for arts education
The Performing Arts Program awarded grants to advocacy organizations working to promote arts education. Supported by multiple funders, the California Alliance for Arts Education in 2006 worked for a landmark budget allocation of $105 million a year for arts education in public schools that meets state standards, as well as a one-time $500 million allowance for arts, music, and physical education supplies. Of course, until the arts are again an integral part of the state's education, funding will always be at risk, and the Alliance will continue its work.

Funding exemplary programs in arts education
The Foundation funds the Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership in Alameda County. This recipient of a three-year grant is  a network of teachers, school administrators, parents, businesses, artists, arts organizations, universities, and community members, all working together to learn how best to deliver arts education to the county's students. The Alliance supports development of teaching skills, shares teaching techniques, and involves parents in the effort. The Music National Service Initiative, another grantee, takes an innovative approach with its pilot program MusicianCorps, a "musical Peace Corps" that deploys newly graduated musicians to teach in disadvantaged public schools.

The Performing Arts Program is not accepting unsolicited Letters of Inquiry for its Arts Education grantmaking at this time. We encourage Bay Area performing arts grantseekers to explore funding opportunities provided with intermediaries and regranters with which we partner.