Reply to Help keep quality arts education alive at Fillmore

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[quote=Anonymous]I served on the LSRT at a school that goes to Fillmore and I can tell you it's all about the budget.

Fillmore started in the 1970's when there were six elementary schools in Burlieth/Foxhall/Palisades -- Fillmore, Hyde, Hardy, Mann, Stoddert and Key. They were all in buildings that were built in the 1930's, which were very small with no library or gym and no space for art or music. As hard as it seems to believe in this era of school crowding and trailers, they were all under-enrolled, in the early 1970's Key was down to around 40 students. They weren't really viable as schools, but the parents resisted closing them. So they came up with a plan where four elementary schools would stay open. Hardy became a middle school for those four schools (not the current Hardy on Wisconsin, but the old Hardy on Foxhall). And Fillmore became the resource school for all of them. At each school, kids would go to Fillmore one day a week and get all of their specials: they'd get art and music at Fillmore, then go across the street to the Georgetown Library for library, then up the street to the Jelleff Boys and Girls Club for PE.

Fast forward 40 years, and the schools now all have libraries and gyms. But Fillmore endures, and the reason it endures is budgetary. DCPS requires art and music as mandatory components of a school budget. What the schools pay Fillmore is less than what it costs to have their own art and music teachers on staff. Through a historical quirk, Fillmore continues to pay a portion of the salary of PE teachers, even though the schools have their own gyms now. Again, what Fillmore charges the schools is less than what it would cost them directly.

In today's DCPS, schools are required to have art, music and PE, but what principals are evaluated on is test scores. Fillmore allows principals to check the art/music box at minimal cost. Quality doesn't matter to principals because it doesn't matter to DCPS.[/quote]

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