California voters just showed how much they value the arts—to the tune of $1 billion per year. On November 8, Election Day, they overwhelmingly approved Proposition 28, “The Arts and Music in Schools Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act.” It was a win that depoliticized support for arts education, guaranteed a steady funding source, and perhaps most importantly, demonstrated a new way forward for arts and education advocates throughout the country.
Prop 28 packed a lot into a small package—a result of careful strategy and smart positioning. The full text of the act is on the California Official Voter Guide website, but this a summary of what it proposed:
• Ensure funding for K-12 arts education is equal to 1% of the total education budget. Money to be allocated from the California General Fund.
• A higher percentage of arts funding for districts that serve low-income students.
• The majority of funds goes towards hiring teachers. Only 1% can be used for administration.
• Every year, local school governing boards must do a self-audit, certifying to the public how the money is being spent and quantifying its impact on students.
• Total increased spending on arts education is expected to be $800 million to $1 billion annually.
That last figure is stunning. For an arts community that has become accustomed to annual National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) appropriations from congress in the range of $150-180 million over the last decade, to see numbers almost ten times greater in a state budget shows that expectations are far too low.
So how did it happen?
Superintendent Austin Beutner visits Hooper Avenue School on June 23, 2021. (Carolyn Cole / Los ... [+]
Austin Beutner, investment banker and publisher, and former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent and Los Angeles deputy mayor, was the driving force behind Prop 28. According to Beutner, the number one request he heard from parents and students during his time as superintendent was for more arts and music. When he stepped down from that position in 2021, he decided to take it directly to the voters.
The key to success, Beutner thought, was to build as broad a coalition of support as possible. He recruited friends in the arts and media like rapper Dr. Dre, producer Jimmy Iovine, and executives like Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, Fender CEO Andy Mooney, and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Business organizations like the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the LA County Business Federation lent their support. So did community non-profits such as the Los Angeles Urban League, and labor unions from the Longshoremen and Teamsters to those serving teachers, food service workers and bus drivers.
Sophomore Max Nakama, 17 years old, being taught about Picasso by painting in an art class of ... [+]
And Beutner was tireless in raising awareness among the public. He took to the airwaves and argued that Prop 28 would be a win for the creative economy of California, ensuring a supply of local talent to fill positions in film, media, music and entertainment industries. He urged schools and arts professionals to prepare for an influx of new arts teachers and teachers’ aides—secure jobs that could be relied on year after year. He touted the importance of guaranteeing a line item in the budget that can’t be removed when the economy wobbles. And, most critically, he reminded voters that the arts teach skills that serve students in whatever career they choose, often for their entire lives.
Despite the reputation of arts-in-education as an easy thing to minimize, there was hardly any opposition. A few newspaper editorials warned that a ballot measure that guaranteed 1% of education funding for the arts would tie lawmakers’ hands (which, as supporters point out, was exactly the reason to put this proposition directly to the voters), and that was about it. Remarkably, as election day neared, the righthand side of the official voter guide, “Argument Against Proposition 28,” remained blank. No one, no group, stepped up to make their opposition official.
Voters cast their ballots at a voting center at Irvine Valley College in Irvine, CA on Tuesday, ... [+]
Today, with more than 95% of votes counted, the final tally shows that Prop 28 passed by almost 30 points. Austin Beutner’s mission to ensure arts education funding, and his strategy for getting it done, was a consequential success that has largely gone unnoticed beyond California.
America has always had a complex and whipsawed relationship with the arts. Artists were suspect during the Revolutionary period—associated with luxury and the royal houses of Europe—then ignored after the country’s founding and for most of the 19th century. During the Great Depression artists were rescued by the government as part of the New Deal, celebrated during the Cold War as evidence of American superiority, and in the past few decades, again vilified by the political right as a cause of moral decline.
With clear public support for Prop 28—across income, ethnic, religious, and political divides—it’s worth asking if that model might represent a new opportunity. It won’t be easy to replicate what Prop 28 accomplished in California; education funding and policy vary widely from state to state. But perhaps going directly to the voters is less risky than it might have seemed. When it comes to the arts, the people may be wiser than their leaders.
