GIA recently sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to urge the Department of Education to include in its Volume 2 Roadmap to Reopening handbook guidance further clarifying the importance of providing access to the arts for low-income children and children of color with the same quality and rigor as their more advantaged peers.
GIA explained that such guidance should make clear that access to arts and culture are critical to reducing the impact of the pandemic on the achievement and social and emotional wellbeing of our country’s children.
Volume 2 of the ED COVID-19 handbook on safe reopening was released this morning. As GIA requested, the document makes explicit the importance of the arts in a well-rounded education (starting on page 45). The document also makes explicit how racialized this access was prior to the pandemic and that addressing this inequity is essential to effective reopening.