04/15/2026
https://www.scusd.edu/about/board-of-education/submit-a-public-comment
Long post, but please read!!! We need all the help we can get!!
Hello Art Student Families!
I am writing to you today for your support at THIS WEEK's Board Meeting. This Thursday, April 16th at 6:15PM will be a pivotal opportunity for the community to come forward and call attention to the negative effects the recent surge of pink-slips distributed to the VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) Teachers of our district will have on our student's education.
You voted YES on the Prop. 28 / AMS Funding and dedicated your tax dollars towards bolstering and growing your students' education of the Arts in California. As a result, once the State allocated the funds in the 2024/2025 school year, we were able to hire VAPA teachers to finally establish robust programs that were cut down during the 2008 recession. Some of these positions had been vacant since many of us parents and community member adults were last in High School, and the programs were never re-built until now.
Now, just two years into the regrowth of these programs, the district put our principals into a position that forced them to pink-slip newly hired teachers not protected by tenure. The very teachers paid for with YOUR tax dollars are now being let go because the district says it cannot afford to have enough teachers to run the very programs you wanted for our students. Not only would we lose the teachers that run the programs, but the money your tax dollars went to build the programs such as tools, equipment and materials will be for not. A complete waste of two years struggling to revamp and refurbish the classes that our students desperately crave. Many of these courses have waitlists for next year's students wanting to enroll into, but now many of the classes do not have teachers to teach them across our district.
We believe this was a blind spot in the thinking of "Last one in, first one out" when our newly hired teachers were cut. The district didn't make the connection that we just spent the last two years searching, interviewing, vetting and training new VAPA teachers to finally reopen and rebuild the Arts in Education for SCUSD. We understand just how critical Art Education is for our students. Art education supports critical thinking, brain development, social skills, emotional regulation and engages core curriculum in real-time for students to better understand Math, Science, English and Social Studies. Art gets our students off their screens and back into their surroundings, engaging in the real world.
Again, please help by making your voices heard- you have the most power as the public we work to serve! Sign up for public comment for THIS THURSDAY at 6.15 at the Board Meeting hosted at Serna Center. 5735 47th Avenue, Sacramento CA 95824.
Submit a Public Comment - Sacramento City Unified School District
