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Madeline Howorth is a senior Honors College student at the University of Maine studying political science and international affairs with a minor in legal studies. They are a student researcher and education advocate.
Your property taxes are rising, but teachers are still leaving school districts. Our students can’t read, and businesses can’t find workers. For young graduates, especially teaching professionals, the decision to leave Maine is simple — housing, jobs, and state funding are much easier to access elsewhere.
But where does that leave us?
Policymakers, parents, and advocates recognize these as facets of Maine’s ongoing “brain drain”: the emigration of educated workers to places they can actually afford to live. Despite the heroic efforts of our community, it seems as though the quest for holistic solutions to our literacy, teaching, and workforce woes is doomed to fail. This is because here in Maine, we are only able to treat the symptoms, not the cause: a broken federal promise that has starved our schools for half a century.
Fifty years ago, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) committed the federal government to funding 40% of special education costs, including intervention for struggling readers and students with mental health conditions. But IDEA also guarantees every child, regardless of disability, the right to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. Congress has never delivered more than 18% of IDEA funding required by law.
That gap, roughly $24 billion annually nationwide, gets absorbed by states like Maine. This means that districts drain their general budgets and raise taxes to only partially cover federally mandated services, leaving less money to pay teachers. We can’t match New Hampshire or Massachusetts salaries, so counselors, special educators, and teachers leave or never apply. We try to patch the gaps with conditional certification, it’s like putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage.
In 2021-2022, 33% of Maine children had diagnosed mental, emotional, or behavioral conditions. This is 14% higher than the previous year, 27% higher than 2017-2018, and well above the national average of 24.5%. Without intervention, these students disengage and either leave Maine for opportunities their education didn’t prepare them for or continue to struggle without resources and employable skills. The cycle continues.
The federal government’s systemic abandonment of its education commitments has accelerated in recent years. The Department of Government Efficiency and the Trump Administration have initiated several education-related reductions in force, leaving fewer than five of the 80-90 employees at the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the department in charge of implementing IDEA provisions. This means thousands of parent complaints now sit unaddressed, and solutions for students are endlessly delayed. This is a civil rights crisis, but the Office for Civil Rights has been gutted, too.
This trend of mass layoffs was foreshadowed in March, with the president calling for the elimination of the Department of Education. This decision was justified by the belief that states and parents could better handle the oversight and funding necessary for proper education. But states, parents, and school districts have been “handling” the $24 billion yearly shortage, and students haven’t found relief. Think of how much more difficult — and inequitable — it would be if states were to bear the entire burden.
The impacts of this federal abandonment are nonpartisan. As a participant in a special education conference in Washington, D.C., I’ve advocated alongside Maine constituents from across the political spectrum. We all want the same thing: for struggling kids to receive the help they’re legally entitled to. The hard truth is that Maine’s teacher shortage has consequences for all, but can only be solved by Congress. When parent complaints sit unread and funding never arrives, the only tool we have left to use is our votes.
So, seek candidates with transparent education policies oriented toward securing federal commitments. Vote yes on school budgets to support what Maine can control. Fifty years of broken promises have brought us here. We can’t afford 50 more.
Maine’s students deserve better. Our teachers deserve better. Our future demands better.