High school junior Maya Shtangrud may have given up on her childhood dream of learning to play the violin — but now, serving as an arts justice fellow at the ACLU of Southern California, she remains steadfast in her advocacy for arts education.
Like many, she hoped Proposition 28 — a ballot measure passed by roughly 65% of voters in November 2022 to allocate about $1 billion toward arts education each year — would lead to greater opportunities for her fellow students.
She’s not quite as optimistic now, and is joining a group of teachers and advocates to sound alarms on the district’s alleged mismanagement of their estimated $76.7 million in Proposition 28 money — which they claim has been used to pay for current teachers rather than create new programs or bolster existing ones.
“I really want adults, teachers, administrators, people who distribute the Prop. 28 funds, to understand that they need to really think about it from our perspective and see how much it is impacting us,” said Shtangrud, who now plays jazz piano and enjoys filmmaking. “A lot of people don’t understand the impact that the arts have on us students.”
Most families assume their children are getting some form of arts education, said Janine Riveire, a professor of music and music education at Cal Poly Pomona. Many also hoped that Proposition 28’s passage would lead to better outcomes for their children.
Despite Proposition 28’s widespread support in the polls, bringing arts education to students across the Los Angeles Unified School District has remained a challenge — with educators and advocates claiming that the district’s implementation of Proposition 28 has failed to give individual campuses their own discretion over the use of their funds, leading to roadblocks that impede teachers’ ability to access supplies central to their artistic discipline.
“Millions of Californians, voters and parents and others, voted for more arts funding for schools,” said Amir Whitaker, senior policy counsel of the ACLU of Southern California’,, who is also part of the LAUSD Arts Advisory Council. “And that’s not what we’re seeing.”
Widespread calls to action
On March 25, various unions and former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, who authored Proposition 28, wrote a letter to state officials — Gov. Gavin Newsom, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire and Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas — demanding the state hold districts accountable for their spending.
“Prop 28 is the largest investment in arts and music in U.S. history and establishes California as a national leader. But only if it’s properly implemented,” the letter reads.
“If school districts are allowed to violate the law without consequence and substitute the new funds for something they were already spending money on, their actions will make a mockery of voters’ clear wishes.”
The letter — supported by SEIU 99 President Max Arias, Oakland Education Association President Ismael Armendariz, UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz, California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas, Teamsters Local 572 Secretary-Treasurer Lourdes M. Garcia, California Teachers Association President David Goldberg — also urged the state officials to direct schools to submit, within a 30-day window, proof that they have not supplanted money and a list of teachers employed during both the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years.
“Instead of hiring about 15,000 additional teachers and aides, the funds would instead be used to pay for existing programs,” the letter reads. “This means millions of children will miss out on the arts education voters promised them.”
In a statement to EdSource, LAUSD said it remains committed to arts education. This year, the district budgeted $129.5 million toward the arts, on top of $76.7 million from Proposition 28, for a total of more than $206 million. That is almost three times the $74.4 million that a district spokesperson said LAUSD spent on arts education in the 2022-23 academic year.
“We couldn’t agree more in how formative and critical the arts are for personal development, social emotional regulation, educational attunement, and an overall appreciation for diversity, cultures, and experiences,” according to the statement. “That is why the arts are so central to the instruction and pedagogy of Los Angeles Unified.”
The district also claimed its current investments in the arts “meet and exceed requirements specific to Prop 28, and that Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is coordinating “a comprehensive multilayered scan” of the district’s investments and expenses.
While applauding efforts at various districts throughout the state — and especially in Bakersfield and Santa Monica — for their implementation of Proposition 28, Beutner said LAUSD’s statewide leadership in arts education has waned over the past decade, referring to it as “the poster child for how to violate law.”
“Maybe the time in which (various districts) responded was similar, but one read the law and chose to do what the law says and do the right thing for kids in their schools,” Beutner said. “One read the law and said, ‘OK, we’re going to ignore that, and we’re going to do something different, and we’re going to cut funding for the arts and hope nobody finds out.’
“Two different approaches. Same law.”
Proposition 28 spending at the district level
Beutner said that before Proposition 28’s passage, only about 20% of California’s public schools had a full-time arts or music teacher. Advocates for the measure faced no opposition, and support was widespread — and garnered about 65% of the vote, he added.
Proposition 28 was also designed to prioritize hiring new arts teachers — and schools are required under the measure to use at least 80% of funds to hire staff. The funds are supposed to add to the existing money — not replace it, which Whitaker and several teachers told EdSource that LAUSD is doing. They also said they’ve heard accounts of the district firing arts teachers only to rehire them with Proposition 28 funds. They fear that this practice will deplete the funds without making any improvement in arts ed.
“For the 2023-2024 school year, the LAUSD’s General Fund is not being utilized for either of the above purposes,” an instructor claimed in an email to the California Department of Education.
“Instead, LAUSD has replaced the General Fund’s allocations for itinerant arts positions (approximately 250 FTE funded in the 2022-2023 school year) and the allocations for arts materials/supplies for every elementary and secondary school with the funds from Proposition 28.”
Teachers have suggested the trend will continue in the upcoming year, pointing to this year’s purchase forms for itinerant arts services issued for the 2024-25 academic year, which identify Proposition 28 as the funding source for elementary school principals.
At school, closer to home
Ginger Rose Fox, an elementary school dance teacher who serves as the United Teachers Los Angeles Arts Education committee chair, said she is concerned that LAUSD’s implementation is costing schools their autonomy in choosing how to spend their Proposition 28 money.
Beutner added that giving schools autonomy is also the law.
“Not top down ‘what does the district want done?’ … This was written to give agency to school communities, and it saddens me greatly to see L.A. Unified ignoring what was written in the law, the will of the voters to do something, just because they want to do it their way.”
Ensuring schools can make their own decisions directly affects students’ ability to access certain arts disciplines and have continued access throughout their K-12 education, Fox said.
“Can this kid who was excelling in dance in elementary school be able to have dance in middle school?” Fox said.
Fox and other educators have emphasized that giving individual schools autonomy on how to allocate resources is critical to that process.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring families into school to engage alongside teachers and school leaders and say, ‘What do we want to do?’” Beutner said.
In November, Fox wrote a letter to Thurmond and California Department of Education.
In addition to concerns about allegedly supplanted money, Fox claimed that the district’s use of Proposition 28 funds has also depleted the stock for critical arts supplies.
Arts educators and advocates stressed that some teachers are now struggling to purchase basic materials that are critical to their discipline — ranging from musical instruments to clay and visual arts supplies.
Many of them are still calling for accountability and hoping that the funds will eventually come to support students.
Beutner said he had hoped that after the documentary film “The Last Repair Shop” won an Oscar recently, the district would make a greater commitment to arts education. Unfortunately, he said, that did not happen.
“The repair shop has been wonderful. It’s been long standing, and the people that work there are my heroes,” Beutner said. “How, at the same time, could you be and have been, for more than a year now, cutting funding for the arts?”
