Findley Sings In Arts Advocacy at State Capitol
Students from Findley Elementary School sang in the House and Senate chambers to kick off Arts Advocacy Day at the State Capitol.
Wednesday was Arts Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill in Des Moines and singers from Findley Elementary set the tone in both chambers of the state legislature.
Instead of bringing down the house, the medley of Song of Iowa and Iowa Corn Song brought the House of Representatives to its feet. Half an hour later the encore performance also drew a standing O across the rotunda in the Senate.
Findley’s music teacher, Jane Olson, said the prestigious gig came courtesy of an invitation from the Iowa Alliance for Arts Education. “We’ve been practicing,” she said, “and the kids have also been learning about how the legislature works.”
After their performances the students had breakfast in the capitol cafeteria and took a guided tour of the majestic statehouse which drew many oohs and aahs as they made their rounds. Mouths fell open, heads tilted upward, and fingers pointed at the sheer scope and grandeur of the place.
The pint-sized constituents also planned to find time for some lobbying on behalf of arts education. Each of the 4th graders brought along notecards on which they’d jotted why the arts are so important to them at school. As they waited to sing in the Senate gallery they met with Senator Nate Boulton who represents the Findley neighborhood and shared some of their thoughts with him.
Findley was the first of five DMPS schools in the North High feeder pattern to receive funding from the federal Turnaround Arts program, a public/private partnership that facilitates arts integration throughout a school’s curriculum and thereby boosts academic achievement across the board.
Despite mounting research to that effect, arts funding is in jeopardy this year in Iowa as lawmakers debate ways to address shortfalls in state revenue estimates.
A modest program to benefit fine arts instruction in Iowa classrooms is one casualty of the fiscal belt-tightening. The $25,000 appropriation that had been promised as matching funds for money raised by teachers in collaboration with the IAAE now appears dead. The money would have been used to provide mentoring for new fine arts teachers.
The Iowa Cultural Trust fund is also on the chopping block.
A tentative budget agreement between legislators and the governor’s office would take the entire $6 million in the fund, which was established in 2002, and reallocate it to other state agencies.
Lobbyists whose job it is to advocate on behalf of funding for the arts and the concerned citizens who came to the capitol to bolster their ranks on Arts Advocacy Day had their work cut out for them.
But nobody can say the fine artists from Findley didn’t provide the perfect mood music.
