Holding up a palette of different paint colors, Lani Fink, an art teacher from the Honolulu Academy of Arts, prepared her students to paint drawings they made on acetate.

"Which colors make green?" Fink asked, pointing at the palette of paint.

"Blue and yellow," 9-year-old Preetha Pant said loudly, nearly jumping out of her chair with excitement.

Preetha and her other fourth-grade classmates at Kuhio Elementary School take an art class with Fink once a week after school. Fink is among a handful of art teachers who visit about 40 public schools across the state as part of Honolulu Academy of Arts' Art to Go program.

"Most of the schools we go to don't have art programs or art teachers," Fink said. "It makes me sad, because at this level, kids need art as a way to express themselves," she said.

With the growing expectations of No Child Left Behind and the increased emphasis of standardized test scores, educators readily admit that art education often takes a back seat to other "testable" subjects such as math, reading and science.

And with proposed budget cuts of up to $70 million to public schools and hundreds of thousands more dollars to the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, art education in the classroom could be further threatened, said Marilyn Cristofori, chief executive officer of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance.

"On Monday (Gov. Linda Lingle) will send her budget to the Legislature," Cristofori said. "We're hoping that she will live up to her reputation of supporting arts and culture, and she will leave that part of the budget in tact."

Regardless, arts education in the public schools has seen dramatic changes since the institution of No Child Left Behind, signed into law in 2002, and the state's Reinventing Education Act of 2004, known as Act 51.

Act 51 gave school administrators greater control over their budgets. But because of limited funding and the expectations to perform under NCLB, schools often opt to put money into technology or support for core subject areas rather than art.

PART-TIME TEACHER

Evelyn Aczon Hao, principal at Kuhio Elementary, said her school chooses to use its school funding to pay for a part-time art teacher at the school. But most schools don't even do that, she said.

"Because arts are such a high priority for me, I've always made sure we have money for that," Hao said.

"I could probably choose to eliminate that, and maybe have double periods of other areas of the academic core. But I see the arts as being a part of the core. I can't see doing that."

Kuhio Elementary is more of an exception than the norm when it comes to visual art instruction on the elementary level in public schools. Most schools rely on their regular classroom teachers to deliver art instruction. Very few have trained art teachers or artists employed full time or even part time.

"Before No Child Left Behind, there were actual Department of Education positions for this. Perhaps one teacher would visit two or three schools. Some were lucky to have their own teachers," Cristofori said.

That's nearly wiped out now, she said.

"The exception is if maybe the parents have raised the money for a position," she said.

That's the case at Mililani Mauka Elementary, where for two years parents have managed to raise about $12,000 a year to pay for a part-time art teacher, said vice principal Kyle Shimabukuro.

"I think (parents) recognized that we need to provide a well-rounded education for our students, not just the reading and math experience, but music, art, physical education, as well," Shimabukuro said.

Most elementary schools rely on their regular classroom teachers to deliver art lessons, and usually it's integrated with another subject.

"One of the options is to incorporate art into a language arts project or social studies," Shimabukuro said.

PROGRAM HIRES ARTISTS

The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts' Artists in the Schools program does exactly that, Cristofori said.

The Artists in the Schools program matches professional teaching artists with classroom teachers to deliver art lessons that adhere to the state's curriculum standards. Artists provide 10 sessions of classroom instruction and classroom teachers then continue those lessons by integrating them into other courses.

Even that program is not the most desirable option for art in the schools, Cristofori said.

"At $212,000, it can't service that many schools. If we were to really hit every school, we would need 10 times that much," Cristofori said.

With likely budget cuts, that's not going to happen, she said.

Lingle has said that the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts may have to cut its grants and programs budget by $1.3 million. That would include all of the state agency's educational outreach, Cristofori said.

Lingle will submit her state budget to lawmakers this week.

Ruth Silberstein, principal at Palolo Elementary, said the school does not have an art teacher, but classroom teachers are encouraged to teach their own art lessons.

"Integrating art into the content areas is more common now, because of the lack of time with No Child Left Behind," Silberstein said.

But educators are also beginning to recognize that arts can affect how students perform in other core subject areas, she said.

"We have one teacher who is particularly gifted at teaching art with literature. They will do poetry and use poetry to create art. ... It is phenomenal what happens. The results we see are phenomenal," she said.

REAL LESSONS

Back at Kuhio Elementary, art teacher Fink says art lessons aren't just about finger painting or playing around with crayons.

"These are real lessons, tied to what the kids are learning in their classes," she said.

Last week, Fink taught a lesson based on the stylized art of local artist Heather Brown. She taught the children to use lines and perspective, things they've been learning with their classroom teachers.

Pearlyn Salvador, outreach program coordinator for the Honolulu Academy of Arts, said the Art to Go program is filling just a tiny portion of the need for arts education in the schools.

"Our aim is to mostly serve the underserved youth, low-income communities and schools without an art program," she said.

Salvador, who worked as an art teacher with the program before coordinating it, said she has seen the positive effects of art education.

She said she's seen students learn to express themselves through their art.

"The kids will come out of their shell a little bit and even start relating more with the kids around them," she said.