The Georgia Department of Education announced on Thursday that it is awarding $270,000 to rural school districts to assist the expansion of fine arts opportunities for students. Nine rural districts will receive stART grants, to be used to create or expand existing arts programs.
The grants are part of the broader Partnership for Rural Growth Initiative, meant to expand the resources available to rural districts. In addition to the stART grants, the Rural Growth Iniative also includes STEM and STEAM coordinators for Southwest and Southeast Georgia; workshops to increase access to AP, Dual Enrollment and gifted coursework; grants to teach entrepreneurship; and, a school improvement network for leaders from rural schools.
“We know that the fine arts provide significant academic and non-academic benefits for all students,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “Arts education helps children develop language and fine-motor skills. It keeps them engaged in their education. It equips them with the creativity, ingenuity, and resilience needed to succeed in the modern workforce. At the Georgia Department of Education we are committed to providing the resources necessary to provide fine arts opportunities to all students.”
Each grant amounts to $10,000 and can be enhanced with funds from the federal Every Student Succeeds Act which also supports arts programs. Any school district qualified as rural under the federal Rural Education Achievement Program is eligible for the grant.
This is the second round of funding provided through these grants; twenty schools received them last year. In last year’s announcement of the grants, Woods noted that “fine arts education is not an ‘extra’ – it’s a crucial part of a well-rounded education.” According to the GDoE, more than 18,000 students directly participated in new or expanded arts education in rural Georgia as a result of these grants.
“The GaDOE start grant has had an amazing impact on the visual arts and band programs at our school,” said Alisha Montgomery, an art teacher at Willie J. Williams Middle School in Colquitt County, one of the districts that received a stART grant last year. “Through the funds we received, we were able to have more instruments available for student use and were able to customize the visual arts class, by using laptops and 21st century skills, to individual students’ abilities.”
Besides Colquitt County and the band programs, other counties used the funds for professional development or certification. Two counties Teacher of the Year, Bulloch and Cook, credited the grants to increase the positive impact they had on their schools.
In addition to the local grants, the DoE also has a full-time fine arts specialist at the state level, creating new virtual fine arts courses, refreshing standards, increasing the number of creative-industry-aligned high school arts courses, offering professional learning on arts integration for teachers of all content areas, and developing a new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) certification for school districts and a Fine Arts Diploma Seal for graduates.
