Starting in January, students at 15 elementary schools will have the opportunity to join a ballet folklórico dance program after school. The Santa Maria-Bonita School District board approved a roughly $59,000 contract with Children’s Creative Project at the Dec. 10 meeting.
“By securing these services, we demonstrate our commitment to providing students with high quality, culturally relevant art instruction,” the district’s director of teaching and learning supplemental programs, Laurie Graack, told the board.
Twice a week after school, 40 students from each campus will participate in a 90-minute workshop. They’ll learn about Mexican dance, music, art, and storytelling, spending half of each session dancing the traditional ballet folklórico in costumes and hats, Graack explained in her presentation.
The program will last for 10 weeks at each campus. Five schools will begin the program in January, five in March, and the last five will start in late April, Graack added.
Principals of Santa Maria-Bonita’s 17 elementary sites filled out a survey that the district sent to gauge interest about the workshop and scheduling preferences. Two schools are already offering ballet folklórico programs of their own.
“We think probably it’s going to be reasonable to say, ‘We’re not going to get you this time. We’ll catch you next year,’” Graack said about the two sites. “We’ll figure out a way to meet as many requests as we can.”
After Graack’s presentation, board member John Hollinshead spoke up about including more education on Mixteco cultures. Hollinshead said his questions were informed by attending a Mixteco seminar earlier that afternoon.
“We seem to repetitively or repeatedly contract with the same people to provide the same cultural outreach, and I don’t mean this to be disrespectful,” Hollinshead said. “When you hear about all the different cultural things that are happening or happen in Mexico, … I feel like we need to maybe start looking at some of those things to validate our Mixteco students as well.”
Graack responded that the district is communicating with the nonprofit Corazón del Pueblo to incorporate indigenous education in after-school programs and daily instruction.
“I think you’ll start to see those things rolling out in the school day and in our expanded learning offerings,” Graack said.
Board member Ricardo Valencia emphasized that it’s important for the district to have a close partnership with Corazón del Pueblo. Even in ballet folklórico, certain Mexican states may be left out of the conversation “inadvertently or through cultural bias,” Valencia said.
Children’s Creative Project is a program through the Santa Barbara County Office of Education. The contract sum includes all the supplies and costumes for students, which the district will keep and reuse when possible.
The program, known for connecting students with professional artists, will be responsible for clearing and hiring the instructors. Staffing costs are also included in the contract.
Graack said the goal is to start the workshop at all the district’s sites, but it wasn’t yet feasible because the academic year is halfway over. In future years, the district intends to renew the contract for all 21 schools.
This article appears in Dec 18 – Dec 25, 2025.