While there has been a sharp decline in arts education programs among underserved populations across the nation, North Carolina’s Guilford County Schools is bucking this trend.

With the help of local partnerships, our public school district of 72,000 students—66 percent of whom are minorities, and 62 percent of whom live in poverty—has created a number of new opportunities for students in the visual and performing arts. And our focus on arts education is paying off, resulting in higher achievement and more chances for traditionally underserved youth to shine.

As a result of these programs, Guilford County students have performed at Carnegie Hall, Disney World, and the Vatican, and their artwork has been displayed in the halls of Congress. The district has become an attractive place for parents to choice their students. And our graduation rate is 89 percent overall, and 88 percent for African-American students—up from 72 percent of African-American students in 2008, and much higher than the national rate of 69 percent for this demographic.

Here are five things we do to close opportunity gaps and make arts education a priority for all students.

Invest in arts education at every level. When former Superintendent Maurice Green arrived in 2008, arts education had been in steady decline in Guilford County, like in most districts nationwide. One of the first things Green did as superintendent was hold a “listening tour,” in which he traveled throughout the community and asked parents what their biggest priorities were for the district. One theme he heard consistently was the importance of arts education.

As a result of this feedback, we have made strengthening arts education a part of our district’s strategic plan since 2009. Music and art programs are taught at every elementary school, and some of our elementary schools have theater and dance programs as well. Guilford County also has arts education magnet programs at three elementary schools, two middle schools, and two high schools. Altogether, we have more than 400 arts education instructors throughout the district—and one of our two nationally ranked magnet high schools for the arts, Weaver Academy, offers a music recording and engineering program in addition to voice, dance, fine arts, and theater.

Partner with community organizations to bring arts experiences to students. We’re committed to making sure our students have experiences in the arts that they might never have otherwise, despite massive state cuts in K-12 spending since 2008. To keep the arts alive in our schools, we have partnered with a number of private and community organizations for assistance.

For instance, through a partnership with the Greensboro Symphony, each year we send every third, fourth, and seventh grade student to a concert. The Greensboro Symphony gives us a discount on the cost of the tickets, and they also develop a curriculum around each concert’s theme and supply this curriculum to our teachers at no additional charge. We have a similar arrangement with the Greensboro Opera Company, and we send every fifth grader to the opera each year.

We also partner with the Community Theater of Greensboro to produce a full-scale Broadway-style musical with our students. We provide scripts, props, and royalties, while CTG provides (and staffs) its Starr Theater for performances. And we partner with Greensboro City Arts to produce “Shakespeare in the Park” performances. City Arts provides equipment, sound, props, costuming, and the outdoor amphitheater for free, so we can provide an authentic outdoor Shakespeare experience for our students.

Create a Summer Arts Institute to bring more opportunities to our students. We launched this program in 2010, and since then it has grown in size and scope—giving more than 1,200 students a chance to develop their skills and gain exposure to theater, dance, and music lessons over the course of six weeks during the summer.

Our Summer Arts Institute has been a major component in revitalizing arts education in Guilford County. We now offer weeklong programs for elementary, middle school, and advanced students on topics such as jazz, dance theatre, and even arts-focused leadership. In addition, we offer preparatory classes for students interested in taking Advanced Placement music theory or visual arts.

We charge a fee to participate in our summer programs, but we waive the fee to make sure our poorest students can participate. And through the generosity of its owner, local business Moore Music lends us dozens of brand-new musical instruments for low-income students to use during the summer institute at no charge.

Embed arts education throughout our core curriculum. We’ve started an afternoon professional development session called “Arts in the Common Core,” in which arts education teachers and core curriculum teachers get together to co-design lessons. These lessons are shared on our district-wide intranet, so any teacher can access them. When U.S. history teachers cover the Roaring Twenties, for example, they include lessons on the development of jazz and how it was reflective of our society back then. It’s a very authentic way to integrate arts education into the core curriculum.

Plan to offer music lessons for students. Looking to the future, we plan to offer group or private music lessons after school to any interested student. As with our Summer Arts Institute, we will charge a fee for this service, but the fee will be waived for low-income students. For every student whose family pays for lessons, we will be able to offer this service to a student living in poverty at no cost.

With the help of community partnerships and an unwavering focus on providing opportunities for all students, we’re bringing arts education to tens of thousands of underprivileged youth from kindergarten through high school—and we’re touching young people’s lives in very profound ways in the process.