The Bangor Daily News will spend the coming months examining the public education system as part of a new, ongoing project to cover what it’s like to be a kid growing up in Maine. We aim to understand why schools and students are struggling so much more than they were ten years ago, and to identify ways to create positive change.
As we embark on this reporting, we want to hear from you. We welcome you to share your thoughts and perspective in the form below. You can also reach out to the primary reporter on this series, Sawyer Loftus, at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.
When the Bangor Daily News launched its investigation into Maine’s education freefall last month, we asked readers what they had seen and experienced firsthand.
We received dozens of responses, and are highlighting three below. They came from educators with diverse backgrounds and a combined century of classroom experience.
Their responses shared a theme: Maine schools are trying to do too much, for too many different kids, without being held to a consistent standard, while also not being adequately funded. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.
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Al Schaeffer, retired vocational educator
I retired from public education here in Maine four years ago after 34 years. In that time, I have seen the world around us and students become vastly more complicated in so many ways; it’s almost immeasurable. There are never going to be simple solutions, and looking backwards will likely not be of any help. We live in a new world that changes rapidly.
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that schools have desperately and compassionately tried, or were mandated to be, all things to all students. The result is that it’s very difficult to be really good at anything when resources are spread so thin to meet this expectation.
My experience, and this may be outdated, was that education was still driven by seat time, not by true competency or mastery of the material to be learned. There is much more new material being crammed into those precious 180 days in a school year now.
Last, many schools may not really be aware of the deep-rooted effects of alcohol and drug addiction in the home on the ability to learn. The same can be said for the various forms of childhood trauma. Students come from vastly different homes and family environments now. Education is in a very tough place right now.
Susan Young, English teacher, 40 years across Maine public and private schools.
My best teaching experience ever was for former Principal Derek Pierce at Portland’s Casco Bay High School. Derek was an inspirational leader who held both students and teachers to their highest standards.
My worst teaching experience was in a western Maine school district. I was hired to teach a dual-enrollment college writing class, in partnership with a local university. However, I was soon met with local hostility and resistance to the college-level standards the university expected me to maintain. I was told my course should be “easier” than the Advanced Placement English course, despite the fact that my course was for actual vs. potential college credit.
I was told I needed to allow students to opt out of required class discussion and “just complete their written work in the resource room.”
I read recently about a trend for “compassion without accountability.” There is no education without accountability. There has been so much emphasis on “meeting students where they’re at” that there’s virtually no discussion about how to help students move beyond “where they’re at” to see their much greater potential.
We have raised a generation of anxious children because we have failed to trust in their resilience, curiosity, and [ability] to problem-solve for themselves, and public school administrations have failed to back up teachers who love their students enough to maintain high standards, kow-towing to parents who see teachers as “servants,” not as professionals.
Brian McGill, chair of the Orono-based school board and biological science professor at the University of Maine
While it might be convenient to blame inefficient use of resources for Maine’s declining test scores, the plain truth is state funding in real dollar terms has declined. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that poorer results follow less investment.
Since 2022, when the state stabilized at funding the voter-mandated 55% of educational costs, every change to school budgets has come down to the Essential Programs and Services funding formula — which sets budgets based on projected teacher counts, salaries, and fixed per-pupil costs.
Between 2022 and the coming 2026-2027 school year, real-world wages and cost of goods each rose 23%. The EPS formula only credited a 12.7% salary increase and 12.3% for costs. That’s a gap of more than 10% in five years, and it’s left districts with exactly two choices: cut services or raise property taxes.
This year’s legislative work on EPS didn’t touch that gap. It was about dividing the same pie differently between towns — shifting the allocation to weigh income alongside property values. None of it grew the total funding pool in any meaningful way.
The property tax revolts we’re seeing are almost entirely about that shrinking pie relative to inflation — not about how it’s divided between towns. It’s urgent that the Legislature ties the EPS formula to real costs through inflation-indexing, so students aren’t stuck with a degrading education year after year.
Have your own experience with Maine’s school system? Write to me at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.
