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Sacramento City Unified School District had three years to spend $6.3 million in Proposition 28 arts and music funding. It spent about $4.5 million, leaving $1.8 million unspent — more than any other California school district.
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Prop. 28, approved by voters in 2022, provides annual funding to expand arts education in schools. The state began distributing the money in the 2023-24 school year and districts have up to three years to spend each allocation.
Sac City Unified’s unspent $1.8 million must now be returned to the state, according to the California Department of Education.
“Like many districts throughout California, we’ve faced challenges putting this funding to work,” Alexander Goldberg, a spokesperson for Sacramento City Unified, wrote in an email.
“Finding qualified arts educators, building sustainable positions across multiple school sites, and navigating the requirements of a new funding program have all been part of that process.”
Goldberg said the district has added 32.4 full-time-equivalent arts positions through the funding and has not laid off any arts or music teachers.
Sacramento City Unified faces a $222 million structural deficit and pressure to develop what its fiscal overseers have described as a “feasible” long-term plan to address its fiscal crisis. About 80% of the savings the district has achieved so far this year came from short-term solutions.
Prop. 28 allocates 1% of the state’s K-12 Prop. 98 funding to the arts. The law generally requires districts to use at least 80% of that money for staff who teach arts and music. The remaining 20% can be spent on training, supplies and materials, and arts educational partnership programs. No more than 1% can be used on administration costs.
Abe Flores, deputy director of Create CA, a nonprofit advocacy group that promotes arts education for California students, said the challenges SCUSD cited were not unique to the district. Other districts faced similar hurdles, he said, but most found ways to spend their allocations.
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The California Department of Education’s expenditure data showed that about 89% of school districts spent all or nearly all of their allocation, leaving less than $10,000 unspent.
“The bottom line is that 1.8 million intended for arts education did not reach Sacramento students during that funding cycle, so that is a lot of missed opportunities for kids,” said Flores.
“Our hope is that the district can explain what happened, learn from it, and make sure that future funding translates into more arts teachers, more classes and more opportunities for students.”
Can SCUSD keep its unspent arts money?
Meanwhile, the district’s explanation of what would happen to the unspent money differed from the state’s. When The Sacramento Bee reached out to the district Friday, SCUSD said it had received a state-approved waiver allowing it to carry the unspent Arts and Music in Schools funds, also known as AMS funds, into next year without returning any of it to the state.
The California Department of Education, however, clarified Tuesday that the waiver only applies to the rule requiring districts to spend at least 80% of their Prop. 28 funds on arts and music teachers. It does not extend the three-year spending deadline, and any money left unspent after that deadline must be returned to the state.
“The CDE does not have the authority to waive other statutory requirements for the AMS allocations, and the statute does not provide for any extension of the three-year expenditure period of an allocation,” Michelle Hatfield, an education department spokesperson, wrote in an email.
“Any remaining unexpended funds from the 2023-24 AMS allocation will revert to the CDE” as required under state law, Hatfield added.
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