Category Archives: Maine DOE Updates

Welcome to the April issue of Maine DOE Monthly.

Commissioner Bowen’s Promising Practices Tour has taken him to schools in Portland, Naples and Caribou this month, and he’ll make it to all nine superintendent regions before the end of the school year.

We’re also preparing to release the Maine School Performance Grading System, also known as A-F school report cards, to public schools across the state. And the Next Generation Science Standards, which Maine helped develop, were released earlier this month. The State Board of Education anticipates voting on adoption of the standards later this spring. Continue reading →

Welcome to the March issue of Maine DOE Monthly.

This month, Commissioner Bowen continued his Promising Practices tour at Lewiston Regional Technical Center, where he detailed targeted education supports in Governor Paul R. LePage’s proposed biennial budget and spoke with students who take early college or virtual classes.

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Welcome to the January edition of Maine DOE Updates.

This month, Governor Paul R. LePage submitted his two-year budget proposal – it increases funding in some areas, while moving some retirement costs to local districts. The net result is essentially a flat-funding of education while most other agencies and programs are seeing cuts. We’ve provided some budget-related charts to help you sort it out, and we’ll continue to post new information in the coming weeks as the Legislature debates the Governor’s proposal.

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The events at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., continue to be a challenging and painful presence for many of us, especially in education. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the families of the victims and the entire Newtown community.

Maine DOE has created a Sandy Hook web page with a number of resources for school districts, parents and families, including: information about emergency planning and preparedness, how to talk with children, a Q&A, and other materials. We will add to the page as we discover appropriate resources.

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Welcome to the November edition of Maine DOE Updates.

This month, the Maine Charter School Commission approved the application from the Baxter Academy for Technology and Science, making it the third charter school in the state.

Gov. Paul LePage also declared Nov. 2 “Shannon Shanning Day” to honor Maine’s 2013 Teacher of the Year, and the Department began soliciting applications for next year’s rigorous selection process.

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Welcome to the October edition of Maine DOE Updates.

This month we’ve made history by opening Maine’s first two charter schools, offering students more choices when it comes to their education. We also released Maine’s annual accountability results, which showed that submitting a request last month for flexibility under our current accountability system was the right decision.

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Welcome to the September edition of Maine DOE Updates.

And welcome back, everyone, to another school year.

This month, we applied for flexibility under the No Child Left Behind Act, named a top-notch educator from Poland our 2013 Maine Teacher of the Year and kicked off our new statewide literacy plan.

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Welcome to the summer edition of Maine DOE Updates.

Around the Department, summer is no time to sit back and relax. Since our last Update, Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen has toured a number of schools to showcase the Department’s strategic plan, we’ve kicked-off an early college pilot program in Hermon, and the Maine Charter School Commission has approved three public charter schools – and it’s not even August yet. Continue reading →

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It’s been a busy and important month here in the education world.

It kicked off with Teacher Appreciation Week, a special time to say thank you to our hard-working teachers. It continued with more work on our efforts to craft a new accountability and improvement system for our schools that replaces what we have under the decade-old No Child Left Behind law. And a few late legislative victories have topped it off.

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