Editor’s note: This story was produced in partnership with ArtDesk, published by the Kirkpatrick Foundation. The Kirkpatrick Foundation is also a donor to The Frontier.

In his small rural town near the Texas border, Oklahoma art teacher Glenn Howard is trying to rebuild. The high school in Waurika, population 1,800, has only intermittently offered art classes over the years, facing a lack of supplies and funding. 

Starting with eighth-graders this year, Oklahoma won’t require fine arts credits to earn a high school diploma. Under the new requirements set by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2024, fine arts credits can fulfill some graduation requirements, but they are optional. 

The decision to offer fine arts curriculum will now be left up to school districts across the state. Advocates worry about the future of drama, art and music opportunities in public schools. Rural districts with already limited resources could see cuts. 

“I do have a lot of fears about if we see these classes are no longer a requirement, then we’ll probably see fewer students enroll, ” said Jennifer Allen-Barron, arts education director for the Oklahoma Arts Council. 

If enrollment gets too low, schools could cut classes, narrowing opportunities for kids who love the arts, she said. 

There is some evidence that arts education can help improve student performance. When Wilson Arts Integration Elementary School, an urban school in Oklahoma City, began incorporating the arts into every subject in the mid-1990s, test scores shot up, said Anita Arnold, executive director of the Black Integrated Arts Center, which helped introduce the program at the school. The program is still going today, part of a national partnership with the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. 

Teachers use music and drama to help kids better retain math and science lessons, Arnold said. 

“You’ve got all of these other tools that the teachers are given to engage the students and tap into their full potential,” she said. 

According to state data, Wilson Elementary consistently outperforms the majority of public schools in Oklahoma. In 2024, Wilson’s test scores were 72% higher than the state average.

Utah high schoolers must earn 1.5 credits in the arts to earn a diploma, some of the most robust requirements in the nation. 

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“Every student deserves access to a high-quality education, including one that includes the arts, so they can explore their creativity and develop the critical-thinking skills,” Molly Hart, Utah public schools superintendent, said in a statement.  

U.S. News and World Report ranks Utah fifth in the nation for the quality of its pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade schools.

Limited resources

Oklahoma has long struggled to teach public school students even the basics. Students in Oklahoma ranked behind their peers in reading and math scores last year, according to federal data.

The personal finance company WalletHub ranked Oklahoma schools 50th in the nation this year in a study that took into account graduation rates, test scores, and student-to-teacher ratios. Among other factors. 

The lack of fine arts education in rural Oklahoma has been an issue for years. The advocacy group Oklahomans for the Arts says Oklahoma is falling behind neighboring states. Across all grade levels, 447 of 1,721 public schools in Oklahoma don’t offer any fine art courses, according to the most recently available figures from Oklahomans for the Arts, a group that advocates for arts funding in the state. More than 116,900 public school students statewide don’t have access to arts education. In Arkansas, every student has access to art courses. In Missouri, just over 16,000 students don’t have access to the fine arts.

Last year, Howard returned to teach high school and middle schoolers in Waurika after leaving for a coaching job at a neighboring school district. He returned to an art program that had no supplies.

“Our community has really helped, buying supplies and helping do fundraisers and things like that, ” Howard said. I’m trying to make sure we apply for every grant that we can and try to find alternative funding sources.”

He also said the school administration has been supportive.

The program restarted with the basics, pencils and sketchbooks, to hold a basic drawing class for students. 

Art class is just one of many duties Howard juggles at the school district. Last year, he also taught three sections of sixth-grade science and two sections of eighth-grade social studies. This school year, he’s teaching a few computer courses. And he drives a school bus. Howard’s school days start at 6:30 a.m. at the Waurika bus barn. He’s not done until around 4:30 p.m. 

Clay Forst, a local rancher who is president of the Waurika school board, said it’s a challenge for rural schools to find qualified math and science teachers, let alone someone to teach art.

But even with changes to Oklahoma’s graduation requirements, Forst said Waurika is committed to continuing to offer art classes.

“Anything you can put in front of students to broaden their minds and broaden their perspective outside our little hometown, I think is a great thing,” Forst said.

Retired art teacher Valerie Beck taught over a thousand students in the visual arts during her more than two decades of teaching in Lindsay, a rural school district about 50 miles south of Oklahoma City. 

She now judges statewide youth arts contests and serves on committees to support fine arts education in Oklahoma. 

Beck knows what fine arts courses can teach students. From problem-solving skills to discovering individualism, Beck said challenging students with art projects teaches the value of practice and hard work.  

“We need art programs and we need to learn how to get along with each other,” Beck said. “The main thing is that they need to fund them, because anything you put into art will pay itself back out into the kinds. They’ll use that their whole life.”

Beck worries about the future of funding for arts programs without the requirement for graduation. 

“It’s always the first thing to go,” Beck said. “They’re not gonna knock out football or something like that.”

The Frontier and ArtDesk reached out to the director of fine arts at the Oklahoma State Department of Education for an interview. The administrator, waiting for approval from the agency’s communication department, stopped responding to messages. The Oklahoma Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment. 

Schools look to grants and private donors to fill the gap

Across the state, nonprofits have been working in rural and low-income areas to promote fine arts education for years. The Oklahoma Children’s Theatre takes its shows to rural and low-income elementary schools. Some shows on the tour include educational workshops from the actors.

“We love going to schools that have no art because the arts are so important,” said Mollie Reid, director of programs at the Oklahoma Children’s Theatre. “No elementary school has a theatre program, so no matter where we go, the art that we are providing is always something that they don’t have access to within the school.” 

The Oklahoma Arts Council invested over $194,000 in rural programs during fiscal year 2024, about 44% of the total nonprofit investment of $440,785 in arts education. 

One rural elementary school used the money to pay for programs where students learned stop-motion animation, mask-making, and music. Another school hired an artist to teach.

“We love to see that people find a little spark through one of these grants and then build on that and start to take on more ambitious projects that involve more students,” Allen-Barron said. 

Fine arts courses can help motivate troubled kids to show up to school, Allen-Barron said. 

“The arts offer students a chance to express something complicated in a safe and healthy way,” Allen-Barron said. “I hope that school leaders looking for solutions to absenteeism and mental health issues will find some answers in the arts, because we see so often what an impact the arts can have for students dealing with those things.”

In Waurika, students painted a mural on the side of a pizza shop in the center of town last spring. Howard aims to continue building up the program this school year. The high school has moved Howard into a larger classroom and is investing in new art tables for students. Plans for another community mural are in the works for this fall. He also hopes to offer a ceramics class eventually. 

“I think we’re on the right track to really do some good things with our art program,” Howard said.

– Frontier Managing Editor Brianna Bailey contributed to this story.