Biddeford-area Superintendent Jeremy Ray testified in support of increasing teacher salaries Wednesday
As Maine continues its attrition of teachers due in large part to low pay, educators and superintendents are supporting legislative efforts to increase the minimum yearly salary over the next five years.
On Wednesday, Sen. Teresa Pierce (D-Cumberland) reintroduced legislation from last session that details four minimum salary increases over five years for certified teachers as well as career and technical education teachers. If her bill were to pass, the first increase that would bump minimum salaries to $45,000 would take effect starting in June 2026. By 2030, the minimum teacher salary would eventually increase to $52,000.
Last year, a similar bill unanimously passed the Joint Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs and received support from the House of Representatives and the Senate, but died after it was passed over for funding by the budget committee.
“We have to change this dynamic. The teaching profession is a profession with esteemed people, well educated. They’re on the front lines of what we do with our kids and education, and how those kids are then going to perform in our workforce,” Pierce said. “We should be paying them more.”
More than a dozen teachers and superintendents, as well statewide groups representing thousands of educators and administrators — including the Maine Education Association and the Maine School Management Association — spoke in favor of the bill at a public hearing Wednesday, pointing to the serious barriers low educator pay creates for young people to enter and stay in the profession. They told legislators about the daily challenges of understaffed classrooms, teachers that quit a few months into the year because of inadequate pay, and current teachers struggling to afford their basic needs.
Opponents of the bill included groups representing school boards and municipalities, which agreed that teachers deserve higher salaries, but also said local taxpayers could not afford to bear the burden of inflated school budgets that would result from a statewide mandated increase.
“Our schools and school board members understand the needs and concerns of our residents, and it should be our local decision, not the state that determines educator salary,” said Faye Anderson, president of the Maine School Boards Association.
“Teacher compensation must be a local decision and should not be mandated by the state.”
Pierce said despite the increased cost to the state and municipalities, increasing teacher salaries must be prioritized since the quality of teachers has impacts on how well Maine students do in academics and beyond.
Rampant staffing shortages would also be alleviated by increased teacher pay, superintendents of Machais and Biddeford-area school districts said. School districts across Maine are currently dealing with a lack of qualified applicants and teachers leaving the profession, with thousands of open jobs on ServingSchools, the website most Maine districts use to fill vacancies.
“There are many issues facing our public schools, but chief among them remains the shortage of qualified teachers and other certified professional staff,” said John Kosinski, government relations director at the Maine Education Association. “Sadly, the shortages are becoming a perennial, chronic issue facing our schools, and we hope we can make progress this session, despite our fiscal challenges, to prioritize lifting the teacher salary in Maine.”
Maine has the lowest teacher salaries in New England and pays teachers a starting salary of $40,000. It ranks 37th in the nation, with both starting and average salaries below the national average, according to National Education Association data that several educators cited in their testimony. Combined with Maine’s increasing cost of living, incoming teachers have little incentive to choose to teach in the state, several speakers said.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.