The Foundation for Portland Public Schools (FPPS) is thrilled to announce their new program, the PPS Arts Partnership. The PPS Arts Partnership was designed to support and enhance the curriculum by bringing visiting artists into classrooms over multiple sessions. This year it will include 16 schools in the Portland Public Schools (PPS) and nine arts groups in the Portland area.

“We’re so excited to be expanding music and arts opportunities for students,” said Andi Weisman Summers, Executive Director of FPPS. “This will allow all of Portland’s high schools and middle schools, plus seven elementary schools, to work with partners to provide additional learning experiences in the arts that are integrated into the curriculum.”

This year’s partners include the Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine, Indigo Arts Alliance, the Maine Academy of Modern Music, Opera Maine, Portland Ovations, Portland Symphony Orchestra, Side x Side, STAGES Youth Theater, and The Telling Room.

“We’ve heard from students, families, and teachers that they’d love for our schools to be able to provide even greater arts experiences,” Summers said. “The PPS Arts Partnership was designed to tap into the abundance  of artists, musicians, and arts organizations that exist in our community and to provide a bit of funding for those groups at the same time we expand opportunities for kids.”

The program was piloted in seven schools in the 2025-26 school year. A local couple donated $50,000 to pilot the program. Their support led an anonymous family of PPS alumni to donate $1 million to FPPS last year, earmarking half of it for music and the arts programming. Those funds allowed the foundation to expand the PPS Arts Partnership districtwide this school year.