Maine
Mills creates committee to study Maine’s school construction funding
Students walk the halls between classes at Scarborough Middle School on April 3. Voters rejected a $160 million bond to renovate the town’s aging and overcrowded schools last year. Now, the governor has created a commission to study how Maine pays for major school projects like this. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
Maine is full of aging school buildings that are overcrowded and often fail to meet modern standards. But when plans to build a new school or do major renovations come up for a bond vote, they’re often rejected by voters, leaving the community with few other ways to update their facilities.
Gov. Janet Mills signed an executive order on Friday establishing a statewide commission that will study the state’s system for funding school renovation and construction projects for the first time since 1998.
“Every child in Maine should be able to attend a safe, modern, efficient and accessible public school – regardless of the community in which they live,” Mills said in a statement Friday. “It’s time for a new look at how Maine pays for school construction.”
Mills’ order creates the Commission on School Construction, a group of state leaders and educators tasked with assessing the system for financing school infrastructure projects. The 13-member commission’s job is to identify statewide construction needs, study how other states fund similar projects and recommend statewide policy changes in a report that it must complete by April 15.
Former Maine Department of Labor Commissioner Valerie Landry will head the group. According to a statement from the governor’s office, the commission is modeled after a bill that was proposed, but did not pass, in the Legislature last spring. Other members will include several state commissioners, three school superintendents and representatives from the construction industry, the state’s bond bank and educational associations.
That includes Steven Bailey, executive director of the Maine School Boards Association, a statewide nonprofit that advocates for the policy interests of school boards.
“Maine schools are woefully behind in being able to be taken care of in terms of their physical structures,” Bailey said. “So this is a great first step.”
Bailey said he has traveled the state for his work, observing schools with overly compact wooden rooms, buildings with insufficient heat and ventilation systems, and schools lacking modern windows. He hopes the commission helps keep momentum on the issue, which he described as urgent.
More than 500 active Maine schools were built before the 1990s, and 243 of them were built before the 1960s, Eileen King, the executive director of the Maine School Superintendents Association, said in a prepared statement.
“This data demonstrates the urgent need to fund school construction in a manner that will provide our students with healthy and safe learning environments that will meet the learning needs of today’s students and can offer equitable access to resources while serving as central hubs for communities,” King said.
The most direct path for building a new school is through a bond, voted on by local taxpayers. But it’s not uncommon for communities to reject a bond, like the Cape Elizabeth and Cumberland-North Yarmouth districts did in 2022 when voters called those measures too expensive.
The only other route is a state grant, awarded every five years out of a pool of roughly $150 million. In the last cycle, just nine out of 74 applicants were given funding. For smaller projects, there are loans available from the state, but in 2023 just a quarter of applicants were approved.
The governor’s office said Friday that despite investments in education infrastructure, construction needs are still much higher than the state can afford.
“Available funding continues to outpace construction and renovation needs and Maine’s aging school infrastructure is expected to require additional investment in the years ahead,” the governor said in her statement.
Many Maine municipalities will open cooling centers this week with the National Weather Service issuing a variety of heat advisories covering the next few days.
The Maine DEP also issued an air quality alert for Wednesday with ground-level ozone expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
All of York County, interior Cumberland and Androscoggin counties, and the southern half of Oxford County will fall under an extreme heat warning from 11 a.m. Wednesday to 8 p.m. Friday.
The warning calls for “dangerously hot conditions” that could feature heat index values of up to 110 degrees, with overnight lows only expected to fall into the 70s, according to the weather service’s office in Gray.
The rest of the state — save northern Aroostook, Piscataquis and Somerset counties — falls under a heat advisory from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday. However, the weather service has also placed much of the state under an extreme heat watch for Thursday.
Heat index values, which measure how hot it feels to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature, are expected to reach up to 104 degrees during the heat advisory period, the weather service warns. They could reach 110 degrees Thursday, when the extreme heat watch is in effect.
Northern Oxford and Franklin counties, and central Somerset County, can expect a heat index value of up to 99 degrees Wednesday, according to the weather service.
The weather service advises people to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned rooms when possible, avoid extended periods in the sun and check up on relatives and neighbors. It also warns not to leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles, as “car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”
Cooling Centers
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has also issued an air quality alert from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Wednesday along the coast from Kittery to Acadia National Park. The agency warns that ground-level ozone concentrations are expected to reach levels that are unhealthy for sensitive groups.
Ozone levels may reach “moderate levels” further inland, according to the Maine DEP, including in all of Androscoggin and Kennebec counties, as well as parts of Cumberland, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot, Sagadahoc, Waldo, Washington and York counties.
Elevated ozone levels can pose a risk to children, older adults and people suffering from respiratory or heart diseases, according to the Maine DEP. Anyone exerting themselves outdoors may also experience health effects, which could include coughing, shortness of breath, throat irritation and mild chest pain.
Ozone levels were already climbing in southern New England on Tuesday, according to the Maine DEP, and winds are expected to bring those conditions to Maine on Wednesday.
The Maine DEP recommends that vulnerable populations avoid strenuous outdoor activities, keep windows closed, and circulate indoor air with fans or air conditioners. Those with asthma are also advised to keep quick-relief medication handy.
Particle pollution levels are also expected to be moderate across the state on Wednesday due to wildfire smoke, the Maine DEP said in its announcement Tuesday. Wildfires in Colorado, which have claimed the lives of three firefighters, had burned nearly 90,000 acres as of Tuesday, according to the Denver Post.
Maine could face up to $50 million in penalties next year due to errors in its payments for federal food benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture find that Maine’s error rate last year was nearly 11%, the bulk of which were overpayments. That’s in line with the U.S. average. But starting in October of next year, states with error rates above 6% must cover a portion of the SNAP benefits.
Anna Korsen, executive director of Full Plates, Full Potential, said the overpayments aren’t fraud — they’re human error. She said this new cost-shifting policy enacted last year under the Trump administration further complicates the SNAP application process.
“Instead, we could make this program more accessible and more efficient,” Korsen said. “And that would reduce the number of errors and also ensure that Mainers who are eligible for SNAP have access to it.”
She’s urging Congress to delay or reverse the policy under the farm bill that’s currently under consideration.
Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services said it’s taking steps to reduce the error rate, including modernizing its systems and hiring an additional 40 eligibility specialists.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.
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