I read online various articles about the importance of art education and learning a musical instrument in childhood development. These articles quote various sources showing statistical data. If you can wade through all of that you will be led to the predictable conclusion that this stuff is important...just like the title of the article says. Usually embedded in the article is a call-to-action....."Tell your local school administrators that you want art and music in the school."
There are two problems. One, the school administrators already know this. They read the reports in professional journals before they were released to the general public. And the administrators are believers. They will agree with nearly everything you say and would be thrilled to either maintain or return these subjects to the curriculum. The reason they don't is because of budget problems.
The second problem is that art and music is available through other sources. The public school is only one of several options. I've given private guitar lessons for nearly fifty years and I've never been in the employ of a public school. The same is true of the piano lessons that my friends teach. But private lessons are paid for privately too. Not in a roundabout fashion through taxes, but directly from the student (or their family) to the teacher. And if you can't afford the lessons you go without.
The question of fairness comes up. Is it fair to a kid from a disadvantaged family to miss out? I remember going to school when music was available to everyone. But not everyone participated. There were a lot of kids who just didn't care. So the relative handful of us who were involved got greater use of the resources. Was it fair to make all of the taxpayers of our community pay for a few of us?
There are other options of course. Booster organizations, grant money for specific classes, etc. But in every case it comes down to money. The teachers need to be paid of course. Equipment and supplies need to be purchased. So the real question is how or who is going to pay? But we can't pass it off on the mysterious "they". As in "they ought to do something about it." We are "they".
This is our community, our school, and these are our children. To improve our quality of life we need to support the arts and art/music education. It's up to us to figure out how.