By Eileen Buckley
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-927762.mp3
Buffalo, NY – State assemblyman Sam Hoyt and several leaders of Buffalo Arts and Cultural Affairs community are demanding that the state Council on the Arts restore funding to the Buffalo Schools Arts Programs.
Upstate was shafted. Erie County has suffered a 69% cut for its school arts funding -- But not in downstate -- New York City received 100% of its Arts in education funding.
"And we certainly are more than happy to take a hit as everyone tightens thier belts fiscally here in the state, but to be zeroed out when others got 100% seems to be a little off balance. We need a level playing field," said Lucinda Ingalls,executive director of MUSE in Buffalo, Musicians United for Superior Education.
Six thousand students and hundreds of classroom teachers across the Buffalo Niagara region have been effected by the funding cuts.
"We don't have one dollar to match to be able to provide programming for schools that have jumped through all the hoops that were necessary to become Empire State Partnerships, which is the funding that got cut," said Ingalls.
MUSE serves two large city schools with more than 800 students at each school. Some Buffalo schools have lost ALL its Arts education funds. Joyce Stillson is director of program and Development with MUSE.
"There are teachers who benefit greatly, and so by their cooperating and by their partnering with teaching artists what happens is, they have short of a professional development experience where they get to learn different strategies of how to work with kids because if kids are really individual, well everyone has a different way of learning," said Stillson.
Art is used to teach Math, Science, Social studies and English.
Folkloric Productions Dance, Hallwalls, the Institute for Arts in Education in Western New York and Young Audiences of Western New York were also zeroed out of the Arts in Education funding.