Santa Clara County Office of Education

The Santa Clara County Office of Education partners with public schools, arts organizations, and community members to support arts education. Its countywide initiative, Artspiration, is part of the agency’s science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) unit. It provides professional development, strategic planning assistance, data analysis, and curricular resources that promote equitable student access to the visual and performance arts. Each year, the initiative reaches 500 teachers in seven districts throughout Santa Clara County. Support for the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Artspiration program advances the Performing Arts Program’s Youth strategy through the Policy and Advocacy substrategy.

The Santa Clara County Office of Education is a regional service agency that provides instructional and business services to the 31 school districts of Santa Clara County. The Santa Clara County Civic Engagement Leadership is a multi-agency collaborative that is planning a civic engagement vision and place called The Power of Democracy: Civic Engagement in Santa Clara County. This effort will kick off with an event and will be followed by four convenings with the goal of increasing and creating new civic engagement opportunities in Santa Clara County.

After conducting an arts education master planning process, the Visual and Performing Arts Department of the Santa Clara County Office of Education launched Artspiration in 2010, a county-wide initiative that aims to make meaningful arts experiences regularly available to students. Support for the initiative would enable the department's staff to expand professional development for teachers, enhance online resources, mobilize parents, educators, and students as arts education advocates, and develop programs and school environments that provide equity and access to the arts for all K-12 public school students in the county.