Prop 28
Schools & afterschool
California Prop 28 arts funding — a ready STEAM music product. Delivers standards-based arts access with celebrity producers; strengthens SEL & school climate; produces a professional music video for showcases & reporting.
We offer Arts & music access, MTSS Tier 1 SEL, student engagement, and a well-rounded education meeting Prop 28 goals with our SEL music supplemental books and interactive SEL school assemblies.
FAQs
Straight answers.
The Arts and Music in Schools — Funding Guarantee and Accountability Act allowable uses break into three buckets: at least 80% for certificated and classified staff providing arts instruction, up to 19% for training, supplies and materials, and arts educational partnership programs, and no more than 1% for administration.
Within that 19%, sites commonly fund music enrichment programs, instructional materials, an arts education partnership with an outside provider, and staff training.
Yes. We provide enrichment programming, school assemblies, and supplemental books for locations across the state.
Yes. Supplies and materials are an allowable use. Proposition 28 requires at least 80% of a site's allocation to go toward employing certificated or classified staff who provide arts instruction. The remaining funds — up to 19%, with no more than 1% for administrative costs — may be used for training, supplies and materials, and arts educational partnership programs.
Instructional books and supplemental instructional materials fall in that supplies-and-materials category. If a provider delivers programming alongside the materials, the purchase may instead fit the arts educational partnership category.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music SEL interactive Assembly runs as a school assembly, and when we deliver it with your students it fits the arts educational partnership program category inside the 19% allocation. Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music Interactive Social Emotional Learning School Assembly works as a site-wide event an end-of-session showcase, or a family engagement event teaching students and/or parents who music effects their behavior, self-regulation and how music can be used as a tool to manage behavior, emotions and stress management.
For sites running enrichment across several campuses, we can do a SEL school tour providing morning and afternoon assemblies at multiple sites within a drive-able radius.
Our interactive Psychological Effects of Music SEL assemblies build decision-making, self-regulation, emotional awareness, communication, positive peer relationships, and community connection as constructive alternatives. The SEL assemblies have been described as fun AND life-changing and transformational. It's great for supporting a Well Rounded education.That is a cleaner fit than the supplies-and-materials line for an event, so describe it as a partnership in your expenditure plan.
SEL music activities built on the Psychological Effects of Music Supplemental Instructional Books, Interactive music assemblies and pep rallies, plus recording and video STEAM production.
Sites looking for music activities for high school students specifically use the teen advanced edition and the recording programming — at that age the studio work holds attention better than anything else in the catalog.
Both, depending on what you buy. When we deliver programming with your students we function as an arts education partnership. When you buy only the Psychological Effects of Music Supplemental Instructional Books, we are a supplies-and-materials vendor.
Sites comparing music education organizations for a Prop 28 partnership should know the distinction matters for how you record it in your expenditure plan.
Yes, as long as the music instruction is genuine and not incidental. Prop 28 funds arts and music instruction, and SEL music education does not stop being music education because it also builds social-emotional skills.
Music SEL in our program means the social-emotional content rides on the musical work rather than replacing it. For documentation, describe the purchase by its arts function first.
Sites running SEL in the music classroom with a credentialed music teacher use the material alongside instruction rather than in place of it.
Yes. When we deliver programming with your students rather than only selling materials, the engagement fits the arts educational partnership program category rather than supplies and materials.
That distinction is worth getting right in your expenditure plan. Arts education organizations delivering programming and vendors selling materials are recorded differently, and the same provider can be either depending on what you buy.
Music enrichment activities built around the psychological effects of music, plus recording and video production programming. Sites use them as a weekly block, a multi-week project cycle, or a series of sessions across a semester.
Coordinators looking for music enrichment ideas or arts integration examples for a Prop 28 plan generally need something with a defined arc rather than one-off activities — that is what a site expenditure plan has to describe.
Yes. Music recording and video production programming is available on site or virtually, and it generally fits the arts educational partnership program category inside the 19% allocation rather than the supplies-and-materials line.
That distinction matters for your expenditure plan. If a provider delivers programming with your students, describe it as an arts education partnership. If you are buying only the books, that is supplies and materials.
Yes. The material includes listening and analysis work that functions as a music appreciation curriculum alongside the social-emotional content, which is useful for sites that need the arts instruction purpose clearly visible in the documentation.
Yes, provided the arts instruction is genuine and not incidental. Prop 28 funds arts and music instruction. Materials that teach music while also developing social-emotional competencies remain arts instruction — the SEL component is additive.
For documentation purposes, describe the purchase by its arts function first, with the social-emotional outcomes noted as a secondary benefit.
Up to 19%, with a separate cap of no more than 1% for administrative costs and at least 80% required for staff providing arts instruction. You may see this shorthanded as “the 20%.” The precise figures are 19% plus the 1% administrative cap.
The site administrator, in collaboration with teachers, families, and students. Proposition 28 money is allocated to each school site individually rather than pooled at the district level, and each site develops its own annual expenditure plan. This is why Prop 28 decisions happen at the school rather than in a district adoption cycle.
Not at typical site-allocation amounts. California's formal bid threshold for supplies sits well above $100,000 and is adjusted annually. Most site-level materials purchases fall far below it. We provide a sole source justification with all proposals as we are sole copyright owners of our process and the only vendor that operates the way we do. This ensures avoiding the bidding process and making the approval process streamlined. We can provide a copy of the copyright upon request.
Your district will still have its own purchasing procedures, informal bid thresholds, and vendor requirements. Confirm with your business office whether the vendor must be registered in your district's vendor system, what your purchasing card limit is, and whether a quote and W-9 are sufficient to issue a purchase order.
No. CDE does not approve or deny individual purchases. The responsibility sits with the LEA to ensure the cost is necessary and reasonable for an arts instruction purpose, that it appears in the site's expenditure plan, and that it is documented.
Prop 28 money has to add to your arts program rather than pay for something you were already funding another way. If your site was already purchasing a particular set of materials out of general funds, moving that same purchase to Prop 28 would be supplanting. Adding materials your program did not previously have is supplementing.
Yes, eventually. An allocation is available for up to three fiscal years. After that, unexpended funds revert to the state and are reallocated. LEAs report unexpended amounts by October 1 following the end of the expenditure period.
If your site is carrying an unspent balance from a prior year, confirm your exact expiration date against CDE's Proposition 28 Year-at-a-Glance guidance for the current year.
Yes, schools may pool or share funds with another school. Funds cannot be transferred from one site to another.
Alignment is expected practice rather than a line-item approval requirement, and it is what makes a purchase straightforward to justify. California's Arts Standards were required by Education Code Section 60605.13 to be based on the National Core Arts Standards, covering dance, media arts, music, theatre, and visual arts.
Ask any vendor which specific standards their materials address. A vendor who can name the codes has done the work; one who says “standards-aligned” without specifics has not.
Yes, at the LEA level. Each LEA completes an annual report, has it approved by its governing board, submits it to CDE through the Arts and Music in Schools portal, and posts it on the LEA's website. The site-level expenditure plan is completed annually but does not have to be posted online, board-approved, or submitted to CDE.
CDE's Arts and Music in Schools team answers both program and fiscal questions at Prop28@cde.ca.gov. You can subscribe to the Prop 28 listserv by emailing join-prop28@mlist.cde.ca.gov. Your county office of education is often faster for practical questions — county arts leads work with school sites on Prop 28 implementation regularly.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it.
Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear.
This is also why the programming usually sits in the arts educational partnership category rather than in training — you are buying delivery, not a train-the-trainer package.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place.
If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff.
This is also why the purchase fits Prop 28's supplement-not-supplant requirement: we add to your arts program rather than paying for instruction you already fund.
45 minutes to 2 hours. Most schools book a class period or 90 minutes.
The 90-minute format is the one we recommend when you have the room. 45 minutes works for a single class period or a tight bell schedule, and 2 hours suits a half-day event, a grade-level rally, or a Black History Month or Red Ribbon Week program.
Tell us your bell schedule and we will fit the session to it rather than asking you to build around us.
How this program runs
Same SIWM work. Built for Prop 28.
Start with the social emotional learning books. Add a keynote. Bring a recording program when you want participants writing and performing — we produce the song and video.
Aligned with Proposition 28 Arts and Music in Schools priorities and California Arts Standards. Students engage in standards-based music and media arts instruction through songwriting, recording and video production while developing artistic expression, performance, digital production, collaboration and creative career skills. National Core Arts Standards (Music & Media Arts); CASEL 5 SEL competencies; Common Core ELA writing & speaking/listening; CTE Arts/A-V Technology & Communications.
Send a request and tell us this is a Prop 28 site.
The Psychological Effects of Music
SEL books & curriculum
SEL books by Ava Johnson plus keynotes for the same rooms.
Ava the Aviator
Keynotes & assemblies
Interactive talks on the science of sound and the psychology of music.
The studio
Recording & music video program
Participants write and perform. We record, produce, and film.