Maine

Overview

During the 2024-2025 school year, Maine preschool enrolled 6,445 children, an increase of 84 from the prior year. State spending totaled $39,812,310 with an additional $1,199,903 in federal recovery funds to support the program, down $49,661 (0.1%), adjusted for inflation, since last year. State spending per child (including federal recovery funds) equaled $6,363 in 2024-2025, down $92 from 2023-2024, adjusted for inflation. Maine met 9 of 10 quality standards benchmarks.

What's New

During the 2024-2025 school year, Maine began to legislatively shift responsibility for early childhood education (3- to 5-year-olds) to the public school system over a four-year period, with completion in the 2027-2028 school year. As this shift occurs, the state anticipates that more children with identified disabilities will receive services in a timely manner and that the state will continue to see steady public pre-k expansion.

In 2024-2025, some remaining COVID-19 relief funding and PDG renewal grant funding were utilized to support expansion of public pre-k funding, including partnerships with licensed child care providers. In addition, the PDG funding has supported a Pre-K Partnership Specialist position to assist with public pre-k partnership development efforts, and Covid-19 funding supported increased staff to provide technical assistance/professional learning to expansion grantees.

In December 2025, Maine was awarded a federal PDG B–5 Systems Building Grant totaling $1,933,007 to support system building and strengthen ECE programs in a mixed-delivery system, improve system efficiency and collaboration, and raise the overall quality of programs.

Background

Maine established its Two-Year Kindergarten initiative in 1983 by allocating resources to local districts through the school funding formula. Since 2007, state-funded programs for 4-year-olds have been separately defined as the Public Preschool Program (PPP), still funded through Maine’s school funding formula, with a distribution of funds to 178 of the 191 (93%) school administrative units (SAUs) that operate kindergarten.

PPP classrooms function as either stand-alone programs located in public schools or SAUs partner with licensed community-based childcare programs or Head Start agencies. Schools are required to provide a local match to draw down a per-pupil state subsidy. The required local match is part of the school funding formula based on property value.

Maine’s Public Preschool Program Standards, promulgated as a regulation in December 2014, outlined programmatic changes including reduced child-staff ratio and group size, the use of evidence-based curricula, and child screening and assessments.

Maine Public Preschool Program

Access

Total state pre-K enrollment	6,445
School districts that offer state program	93% (eligible school administrative units)
Income requirement	No income requirement
Minimum hours of operation	2 hours/day
Operating schedule	School or academic year
Special education enrollment, ages 3 and 4	2,348
Federally funded Head Start enrollment, ages 3 and 4	1,679
State-funded Head Start enrollment, ages 3 and 4	Not reported

Resources

*Pre-K programs may receive additional funds from federal or local sources that are not included in this figure. †Head Start per-child spending includes funding only for 3- and 4-year-olds. ‡K–12 expenditures include capital spending as well as current operating expenditures.