A dirge for treasured arts programs that L.A. schools plan to cut Music teacher Brian Higa was mopping his floor Tuesday morning in a Belmont High School classroom lined with two glittering walls of shiny trophies, a couple of them nearly as tall as his students. "The blue and red ones are for all-city champs, 1988 and 1989," said Higa, who has taught music to Belmont students for a solid quarter-century and was once a student at the school himself. On his desk was an orchestra plaque, from the 1970s, with his name on it. Next year, Higa will get bumped to an unknown teaching job somewhere in the district. His lovingly developed music program - and probably the school's marching band too - will be history. The usual. Nobody knows exactly how many teachers and programs will get thrown under the bus this year, provided the district still has buses, but it could be bad, given the grim state budget forecasts and no consensus on how to stop the bleeding. "Core content classes such as English, math, social studies and science are mandatory and must take priority when budgets are cut," says a written statement on the Belmont music program from the Los Angeles Unified School District. It goes on to suggest that although "this beloved teacher will not continue" despite the quality of the program he built, "exploratory music and band instruction will be retained, and offered before and after school." Yeah, we'll see how that goes. With the speed of a boulder plummeting off a cliff, we're headed for a day when public education in Los Angeles is little more than constant drilling on the three Rs all morning, and nothing but testing after lunch. Elementary school art is also scheduled to get bulldozed into the landfill of better days, and with it the creativity and abstract thinking art education promotes. Three years ago, the district had 355 roving elementary school instructors teaching dance, music, theater and visual arts. The plan was to expand the program to 500 teachers. Instead, their ranks have been slashed, with only about 240 left, and almost all of them have been informed they won't be back next year - at least not as art teachers. The impact? "I could go on for days," said Robin Lithgow, the district's elementary art coordinator. The arts are a solution right in front of us for all kinds of issues. Issues of building empathy in children, critical thinking, building creativity of course, building community, collaborative skills, thinking outside the box. Budgetary restrictions are real, Lithgow acknowledged, but art instruction shouldn't be considered a luxury. It is crucial to producing "thriving students," as so many of the world's civilized nations have concluded, and yet it is sacrificed in the U.S. to a so-called race to the top. "Testing is taking over," said Lithgow. Everybody is saying the same thing - that this obsession with data and scores is destroying public education, but nobody can stop it. Yes, she sounds exasperated, and I don't blame her. As a parent, I'm exasperated too. The problem begins in Sacramento, which keeps pinching the hose because legislators can't muster the courage to enact long-term guarantees for education revenue streams. And elected officials aren't the only impediments to sensible solutions.