Tom Martin install tiles they created in art class on columns at the school's front entrance Friday. The teachers will be moved out of their portable classrooms and forced to roll carts from class to class next year as Hillsborough's school district reduces its 1,800 temporary buildings to 650. The district is cutting its portable classrooms to meet a state deadline requiring it to eliminate portable classrooms that are not up to code by July 1. Because art classes are not part of the core curriculum and many of the schools are already packed, regular classroom teachers will be given a priority. Art teachers with nowhere to go inside the buildings will have to put their supplies on the cart and store their materials and artwork elsewhere in the schools.
Nobody likes the idea of having to go on a cart.
It is unclear how many art teachers will be affected. Ninety-eight of the district's 109 elementary schools have art programs. Some parents and teachers say the cut in classrooms is a step back, an assault that could diminish the contribution of the arts in a child's learning. And they worry about a reduction in time devoted to art since teachers will have to use critical instructional minutes to set up and clean up in the borrowed rooms. It's a subject as worthy as reading and mathematics.