During a week in July, four to five teachers from Bret Harte and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools will take classes at the Music Center in puppetry and music. They are expected to pass the knowledge on to their students and incorporate what they learn into their curriculum, Bret Harte Principal Diane Berger said.
The PTAs at all three schools have used the Music Center's programs for years to supplement for a lack of arts education.
The program's fee increased from $4,000 last year to $7,500 this year and Emerson's PTA couldn't keep up with the cost, Acuff said. All schools experienced the same increase in cost.
"Budget issues entered into it where they didn't before," Acuff said. "I have another training [program] that we are emphasizing for my staff this summer that my staff is participating in."
That training is not only free to the school by way of a regional grant from the Office of Education, but the teachers are also compensated for the time they will spend at the multimedia workshop in July.
The multimedia workshop teachers at Emerson will take focuses on using programs like PowerPoint and the Adobe Creative Suite, Acuff said.
These will be valuable "for use in projects in school and also to help [teachers] with management of grades and data and that sort of thing," she said.
The use of these programs could be extended to the teachers' personal lives and to helping them perform better on the job, Acuff said, but they are not tailored specifically to arts.
Bret Harte and Thomas Jefferson elementary schools will continue their participation in the Music Center's summer workshop for teachers, despite the rise in cost.
And although the multimedia and Music Center workshops both take place during the same period in July, the subject matter for each is completely different.
"They're not even on the same planet," Acuff said. "I'm not implying that they are."
