Teachers know that art can instill a love of learning across all subject areas.

“Art brings joy back into the classroom,” summed up one teacher earlier this year at a conference, sponsored by the Teacher Center and the Center for Arts Education, titled “Uplifting teaching and learning for English language learners through the arts.”

That’s why the recent report on arts education by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli is cause for celebration. After examining New York City data, DiNapoli found 95 percent of 2014 public high school graduates surveyed had received the amount of art instruction required by the state — a dramatic improvement from 2011, when only about half of all graduates had done so.

It’s no surprise that the 2011 numbers were abysmal. The Bloomberg administration stripped the arts from the classroom in its zeal to focus on reading, math and test prep.

In a 2014 report on the state of the arts in the schools, City Comptroller Scott Stringer delved into the Department of Education’s own records and found that between 2006 and 2013 there was an 84 percent decrease — from $10.6 million to $1.7 million — in spending on art supplies, musical instruments and equipment. And between 2008 and 2013, New York City public schools lost 202 certified, school-based arts teachers; school spending on arts and cultural organizations, which provided arts programming for students, declined 47 percent, from $25.7 million to $13.6 million.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña deserve credit for making arts education a priority again. The city provided an additional $23 million for arts instruction in the DOE’s budget for the 2014–15 school year, money that was used to hire 120 art teachers and introduce new classes, programs and partnerships with the city’s bountiful arts and cultural institutions. The mayor also allocated $3.1 million in that same budget for an Arts Teacher’s Choice Fund that provides $1,000 to each full-time, certified arts teacher to buy studio materials, supplies and equipment. And this September, Fariña introduced Arts Monday, which brings arts teachers across the city together for professional development in dance, music, theater and visual arts.

With these kinds of investments in the arts for our students and teachers, the city is slowly righting a ship that was nearly sunk by Bloomberg’s misguided policies.