The San Diego Arts Network

Five years ago, 14 school districts gathered to form the San Diego Arts Network (SDAN). With the full sup­port of the county superintendent and the San Diego County Board of Education, the SDAN launched a mission to create an infrastructure of support for district leadership to build and sustain arts programs countywide.

To begin, the “Founding 14” districts wrote an Arts Work Grant for $25,000 to support the program. The grant was fund­ed by the California Department of Education and the network was off and running. Today, there are 24 district members in­cluding the largest county school district, San Diego Unified, and the smallest, Spencer Valley Elementary.

The SDAN enjoyed three years of sustained funding through the Arts Work Grants. For the past two years, programming has been sustained through the efforts of the San Diego County Office of Education and through the professional development expertise of individuals from member districts. The arts network is going and growing. The ultimate goal will be to provide our unique brand of arts growth tools to all 42 districts in San Diego County. This program is easily adapted. Try it in your county!

Major objectives of the San Diego Arts Network:

1. Provide staff development to district and school site lead­ership to deepen knowledge and understanding of, and participation in, the arts framework, content standards, student assessment, and program implementation models.
2. Support districts in formulating and implementing a re­sponse to the results of the Model Arts Network Toolkit assessment, which is conducted each year.
3. Launch a full-scale Web site to create cross-district link­ages for sharing resources, information, and communica­tion to support each district’s progress on the program implementation continuum.

SDAN leadership provides professional development geared to the demystification of the arts while building capacity for participants within a safe environment.

SDAN members experience eight days of profes­sional development and networking every year. The professional development includes:

1. Standards-based workshops
2. Advocacy meetings
3. Planning sessions
4. A two-day professional development retreat
5. Two field trips to selected schools and districts with model programs
6. Site visitations to work on assessment and evaluation of programs

Staff development begins with an all-day Visual and Per­forming Arts (VAPA) Standards 101 workshop. The workshop explores the five content strands of the VAPA Framework using a fun and interactive mnemonic device. Participants create stu­dent-designed rubrics of their work. They end the day by net­working regarding district arts possibilities. Throughout the year they receive professional development from the California Arts Project, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and from other resources provided by the California Student Leadership Association.

Once a year the coordinator meets with each district to help assess their progress via the Program Quality Indicator (PQI) section of the California Model Arts Network Toolkit. The PQI provides a “heartbeat” graph for each district to analyze from year-to-year. In essence, it helps the district delegation track the growth and sustainability of standards-based arts programming on a yearly basis.

Contact:
Ron Jessee, VAPA Coordinator
San Diego County Office of Education
Phone: (858) 292-3547
e-mail: ronarts@sdcoe.net