Arianne Brown has been a contributing writer at KSL for several years, focusing on sharing uplifting stories.
SALT LAKE CITY — A beloved arts program has been spared for now, following a Utah State Board of Education meeting Thursday that discussed possibly reducing its funding going into the 2026 legislative session.
The Beverley Taylor Sorenson Arts Learning Program is a legislatively funded arts program that allows for arts integration at the elementary level. The program is named for longtime arts-in-education advocate Beverly Taylor Sorenson, who started the program in the mid-1990's. It wasn't until 2008 that the program became funded by the state through grants.Lisa Cluff, the executive director at Friends of BTS Arts, explained that the program works with many universities throughout the state to provide training for teachers to be able to become certified in their art medium, as well as ongoing support and training. She further added that the funding is used to pay teacher salaries, provide art supplies, fund professional development in the arts and support research for the arts in education."$292,000 goes toward administration, and $19,445,000 is for the program," she said. "These are both ongoing funds. It works out to be about $30,000 per school, and there are 466 BTS schools statewide."The continued funding for this program was on the agenda at Thursday's meeting, which was held to discuss how to reduce the budget by 5% or $295.9 million. The reduced budgetary needs came following a letter from the chairs of the Legislature's Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee. The news of a possible "100% reduction" of the program took thousands of people by surprise and left them devastated. Members of the board expressed similar frustrations during the meeting."I imagine it was around 2 o'clock yesterday … because then all of our phones at this table started to blow up with people emailing and texting and calling," boardmember Joseph Kerry from District 2 said during the meeting Thursday."I will tell you that every call that I was able to field, the people on the other end of that call were nothing but polite, courteous and professional. They were upset, but it wasn't the anger; it was more like, 'Why? We just voted to make Beverly Taylor Sorenson funding our number three board request.' And then I'm looking at this document and now we're saying let's eliminate all the funding for Beverly Taylor Sorensen? I can't even reconcile that. I can't explain it to someone who says, 'Wait a sec
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