Another way to build your case for a comics project is highlighting that reading and making comics has been proven to boost key literacy skills such as Prediction, Inferencing, and Fluency. I led a 10-week series of visits to some Detroit public schools (some of which didn't have any kind of art classes) to lead comics classes for grades 3-5. I worked with a professor from the University of Michigan to evaluate how the students' work changed after interacting with comics, and a final report was filed to ArtServe Michigan stating that there was evidence of improvement in reading comprehension. My own personal experience with the students showed that reading and making comics provided a mode of expression for kids who had trouble reading and writing. After all, some things are more elegantly communicated through visuals! As Jim Ottaviani, author of a bevy of comics about science, once said; you'll notice that science books are LOADED with visual information.
I did a 5-minute Ignite talk about this at Ignite Great Lakes.
If you want to teach some comics classes as part of the project, I've put together a 61-page kit with out-of-the-box workshop lessons you can use to kickstart some of your own material. And yes, it's a free download. It even has some State and National Education Standards in there, along with a rubric for evaluating students' work, which people in education always appreciate.
Hope this helps!
(and c'mon, @CyndiFoster, like I'm going to argue with you spreading the word about Kids Read Comics!)
