NPA strives to make each program as affordable as possible for your school or district, creating residency engagements for artists that fully maximize artist capacity in educational settings.  In addition, NPA subsidizes the cost of each and every program that appears in schools, typically at a rate of 40% -- the fees that you will see throughout the website are about 60% of what these programs actually cost.

In the past, we’ve always just scheduled as much programming as possible and let that drive our subsidy goal; that, however, always leaves open the risk that there will be a shortfall that could jeopardize our work. We’ve decided that the more responsible approach is to make it the other way around:  letting the amount of subsidy we have available determine the amount of programming that appears in schools, and actively linking specific donors/foundations to specific school  districts so that those generous people know exactly what their dollars are supporting.

In the future, as we shift toward a foundation model that actually grants subsidy to schools, we will be publishing the full price of programs and working on a process that allows schools to apply for program support.

NPA hopes that this approach will create a fully transparent relationship between our donors and the schools that benefit from their support, and we look forward to any comments or observations you might have on making the process most beneficial to you.

• Audiences: Please consider audience size when you plan. For assemblies, all elementaries should plan at least two programs (1 primary, 1 intermediate); schools with enrollments over 500 should plan a full day of programming so that students can interact and participate.  For  workshops, the audience limit is 30 per program.
  
  

• Teacher participation: We hope that all teachers will participate in every program we send, so that the pre-post materials have a real impact and that, when we send out program evaluations, we get input from the people who know the most about what really makes an arts program a good one!  It is essential, however, in both assembly and workshop settings that there be members of certified staff supervising students at all times.  NPA policy is that artists must work under the direct supervision of school personnel for the entirety of their contact time with students.