Portland Public Schools Board Member Mike Rosen Refuses to Pay Arts Tax

Rosen says he's protesting the fact the arts tax doesn't benefit all PPS students.

By Rachel Monahan

Portland Public Schools board member Mike Rosen has launched a public protest of Portland's arts tax, after WW reported Monday that not all kids are benefiting from it.

The tax funds art teachers for elementary schools throughout the city. But at Harrison Park K-8, one of the most diverse schools in the city, students in the third through fifth grades who are still learning English have to go to their English as a second language classes during the time allotted for art and music.

Rosen publicly announced his tax protest after sharing the WW story on the subject on Facebook.

"Every student in Portland deserves to benefit from the Arts Tax and clearly they are not," he explained.

"This doesn't work for me and clearly IS NOT what the law intended. Jon Walden and every other Principal in PPS needs to make this work for all students – and I'm guessing this is not isolated to Harrison Park. Do your job or don't take the money. And City of Portland, do your job and monitor how this money is or is not spent."

Rosen also took issue with other problems with the arts tax—including that significant numbers of Portlanders aren't paying it anyway and that the public has access to lists of who is and isn't paying.

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