NEWS & MEDIA

An anonymous donor paid for every Portland student to attend the symphony. Here’s what the children said

The headline above is a bit misleading. The anonymous donor actually agreed to pay for every Portland Public Schools student to attend the Portland Museum of Art and performances by Portland Stage and Portland Ovations, in addition to the Portland Symphony Orchestra.

But the headline is pretty long as it is, so we just used the symphony as the ice breaker.

In any event, this anonymous donor put up $100,000 toward this cause in 2012, $150,000 in 2013 and $200,000 each year since, ramping up from a fund that would cover half of all students in Year One to now 100 percent today.

This is in a city where nearly half or more of the student populations of 10 public schools qualify for free or reduced price lunches — a metric commonly used to track childhood poverty levels. Admission costs are legitimate barriers to entry for many Portland students.

This anonymously funded access has been called Culture Club-Portland and is administered through the nonprofit Foundation for Portland Public Schools.

Read the full article on Bangor Daily News