The interviews involved two stakeholders with similar roles but different tasks as leaders. This action research study was conducted virtually and by the person representing Missouri public schools. The participants represented two different types of school systems (suburban and rural). The school districts represented are in two different parts of the state of Missouri. The districts are different in size but face budgetary challenges from time to time as a public school system. The data were gathered by interview questions given. The interviews were done separately. The focus of the pilot study was shared verbatim with both participants separately.
Methodology
As an elementary building principal who controls the school budget, it’s understood how funds can be distributed and what programs are affected. In elementary buildings, art and music are offered. Extension opportunities like band and orchestra are offered as a before-school activities. Due to budget limitations, it cannot be offered throughout the school day to everyone. As a high school assistant principal at a school that started an arts rebuild experience, the reality of the highs and lows was seen. The school once flourished with drama, marching band, and performing concert choir programs. But it experienced a decline when funds had been cut over a ten-year period. Rebuilding was tough due to the lack of middle school and elementary programs that served as feeder school entities. Arts educators had to recruit and pretty much start from scratch. As a product of arts opportunities being made available, participation was a choice. Personal experience being raised in an urban, low-income, and seemingly struggling community fostered the programs that were offered. The arts were a part of the school program and many latched on.
The innovation for the action research study was an adaptation of research and studies on art education defunding and the lack of arts programs in schools. The missing link to arts education and its role in a student’s education has caused supporters of the arts and other stakeholders to showcase school programs that have been revitalized after plans to bring the arts back into schools as a functioning role (course offering). The purpose of this action research pilot is to address the disparity in school funding as it pertains to arts education. The problem addressed by this study was that the investment in fine arts programs in public high schools is not clearly understood or represented in current research and literature. Determining if the investment is related to funding resources, equity issues, or other issues, might reveal important information about how public high schools invest in their fine arts programs and could help future administrators or researchers more clearly understand how fine arts programs in public high schools are valued.
The qualitative interview method was used in this research. The researcher used structured interviews to collect research data. The researcher interviewed one certified school leader and one certified school board member. Two interview guides consisting of open-ended questions that focused on the research on school budgets and defunding were asked during the interviews. A small sample representing the target audience (school board member and school principal), from two different types of districts (suburban & rural), were invited to participate in an interview about their position on school funding and budgets. The interview information was transcribed and the results were gathered. The results were marked by one or more short descriptions of each response for me to further analyze. This allowed for further examination of all statements relating to the data individually. Next, the data were reviewed and compared to district budget information reported on the district and state education websites.
The reliability and validity of this study were considered with the necessary precautions. “Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure…….Validity is the extent to which the scores from a measure represent the variable they are intended to” (Price et al., 2015, p. 2). The data collected was from one instrument (interview). The data was recorded verbatim per response. The questions asked were as written with no additional follow-up request during the interview. Clarifying questions were not included in this study. The participants' responses are based on their working decision-making in budgets/funding.