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Education

Keep great teachers.Teach students how to think.

A school that cannot keep a good teacher does not stay a good school. Pay is part of that. So is what the day is for: reading and mathematics, and ethics and philosophy, so a student can tell a sound argument from a loud one.

71%

Of Mainers who supported a bill to raise minimum teacher pay in stages, from $45,000 to $52,500, in the UNH Survey Center's February 2025 Pine Tree State Poll. Fourteen percent opposed it.

65%

Of independents in that poll who supported the bill. Among Democrats it was 95 percent. Among Republicans it was 46 percent. Most Mainers backed it. Not every party did, and we don't say they did.

Source: UNH Survey Center, Pine Tree State Poll, published February 24, 2025 (855 Maine adults)

Teachers

Recruit them, and give them a reason to stay.

Higher pay is not a theory we invented. Most Mainers already back it, in the poll above, including a majority of independents. The people who teach Maine's children should be able to stay in the classroom and in the town.

Pay is not the whole of it. A teacher also stays for a school that backs the work: a classroom that is calm enough to teach in, a principal who means it, and a schedule that is not only a test.

Source: UNH Survey Center, Pine Tree State Poll, published February 24, 2025 (855 Maine adults)

How to think

Ethics and philosophy belong in the school day.

We would add ethics and philosophy to what a Maine student is taught, beside the skills a job requires. Not as a sermon, and not as a party. As practice in asking what is true, what is fair, and what a person owes the people next door.

That is the same habit this site asks of itself. A number gets a source. A disagreement gets a hearing. A student who has practiced that is harder to stampede, from either side.

What we'd do

Pay, and a curriculum that respects the mind.

  1. Pay that keeps teachers.

    Back a minimum salary that rises over several years, the direction most Mainers already supported in 2025, and fund it in the open so towns are not handed a promise Augusta will not pay for.

  2. Ethics and philosophy.

    A course of study in ethics and philosophy before a student graduates, taught as how to reason, not as which party to join.

  3. Judge the school by the students.

    Ask whether graduates can read a hard page, handle a number, and explain a disagreement without insulting the person who holds it.

Town meeting night

Same side of the room.

Republican, Democrat, or independent, we're Mainers first.

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