By Julia Di Bussolo, Executive Director.
Sometimes, an advocacy win looks like a document appearing on a website. The real measure of success is what happens next.
This fall, Baltimore Advocates for Arts Education (BA4AE) celebrated an important advocacy win: after persistent community advocacy, Baltimore City Public Schools publicly posted its school budget guidance, making information about how schools are expected to allocate resources more accessible to educators, families, and community members.
That may sound like a small change. But within weeks, we saw exactly why transparency matters.
From Public Information to Classroom Impact
Arts Every Day staff work closely with schools across Baltimore City, supporting educators and school leaders as they strengthen arts education. This fall, the newly public budget guidance became part of those conversations.
The guidance is now linked in Arts Every Day’s Arts Rich Schools Self-Assessment, which Partner Schools complete at the beginning of each school year to identify strengths and opportunities for growth in their arts programs.
During a recent meeting with an arts educator and principal at one of our Partner Schools, AED staff pulled up the district’s publicly available budget guidance. Together, they looked at the district’s requirements for Materials of Instruction (MOI) funding.
That conversation led to an important discovery: for the first time in years, the principal had actually allocated the required $5,000 for MOI, along with an additional $4,000 in Concentration of Poverty Grant funding.
The challenge was that the arts educator did not know how to access those funds for the supplies her students needed.
With the guidance in front of them, the team was able to have a concrete conversation about the school’s allocation and the process for accessing the funding.
A publicly available document had become an accountability tool—and a pathway to resources for students.
Why Transparency Matters
For the previous two years, this school had budgeted $0 for materials of instruction. That meant an arts educator was trying to provide meaningful learning experiences without a dedicated allocation for the materials her students needed.
The newly available budget guidance changed the conversation.
Instead of relying on assumptions about what a school could or could not fund, the educator and principal could look together at clearly communicated district expectations and ask: What resources are available to our students, and how do we make sure they reach the classroom?
This is what effective advocacy can look like.
BA4AE’s work did not simply result in a new webpage. It helped create greater transparency around school resources—and gave educators and families another tool to advocate for equitable access to those resources.
The Power of Parent-led Advocacy
This success grew out of the work of Baltimore Advocates for Arts Education, a parent-led community effort focused on ensuring that Baltimore City students have meaningful and equitable access to arts education.
BA4AE pushed for school budget guidance to be made publicly available because families and educators need access to the same information as school administrators if they are going to meaningfully participate in conversations about their children’s education.
That principle is bigger than arts education.
Transparency gives communities information. Information creates the possibility for accountability. And accountability can lead to action.
In this case, that action may mean $9,000 in resources reaching an arts classroom where, for the past two years, there had been none.
And ultimately, that means students having greater access to the materials they need to learn, create, perform, and express themselves.
Advocacy is a Long Game—and Wins Build on One Another
At Arts Every Day, we believe systemic change happens through the combined efforts of educators, families, students, community organizations, school leaders, and advocates.
Sometimes the wins are big and highly visible. Other times, they begin with something as simple as making information public.
But the impact becomes real when someone can take that information into a school meeting and use it to change a conversation—and when that conversation results in more resources for students.
That is the power of advocacy.
And it is why we are grateful to the parents and community members of BA4AE who kept pushing for greater transparency and accountability in Baltimore City Public Schools.
