Maine DOE Celebrates Successful First Annual Green Schools Symposium

On Friday, November 7, 2025, hundreds of Mainers representing schools, nonprofit organizations, and local businesses attended the first annual Green Schools Symposium, held at Thomas College in Waterville. This event, designed to celebrate environmental education and climate action in Maine schools, is part of the Maine Green Schools Program—a partnership between the Maine Department of Education (DOE) and Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF) that supports schools across the state in advancing sustainability in four key areas: leadership, facilities, curriculum, and career pathways.

Students representing regions from coastal to western Maine attended Friday’s Symposium. Attendees heard opening remarks from speakers including Glenn Cummings, Maine DOE Director of Green Schools, and Maulian Bryant, Executive Director of the Wabanaki Alliance. They also listened to a “My Why” Panel, as speakers including former Director of GOPIF Hannah Pingree, Bryant and her daughter, and 2025 Milken Educator Award recipient Micah Depper shared details about their efforts to “green” schools.

Throughout the day, attendees engaged in interactive workshops and attended sessions ranging from interdisciplinary approaches to climate education, to efforts to increase local foods in school meals and reduce food waste, to the exponential growth of green careers in Maine.

“This event represents what the future of Maine looks like, as we work together to ensure that our schools are healthy, cost-efficient, and teaching our next generations how to protect our outdoors,” said Glenn Cummings, Maine DOE Director of Green Schools. “Reducing pollution in our schools is not a niche extra; it is an essential step in school improvement. It improves health. It improves outcomes. It improves cost efficiency. And, most importantly, it improves hope.”

In a letter addressing Symposium attendees, Governor Janet Mills wrote, in part: “I am proud that Maine leads the nation in developing practical, community-based climate solutions that are built by Maine people, for Maine people. Our schools are one of the most important places in which this work can happen. When we improve our school buildings, our curriculum, and the pathways available to young people, we strengthen the foundation of our economy and our future.”

The Symposium marked a launching point for three primary initiatives of the Maine Green Schools Program, including: building environmental literacy and climate-ready learning in pre-K through higher education; cutting carbon and other school pollutants, while cutting waste and cost in school facilities; and creating pathways to real, Maine-based, well-paying clean energy careers. The Maine Green Schools Program has been steadily gaining momentum; earlier this year, the Maine DOE and GOPIF received the 2025 Difference Makers Award from Project Green Schools for their work in designing one of the first statewide climate-ready education systems in the nation.

One student in attendance at the Symposium, Cedar Worster, a senior at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School and co-chair of the Maine DOE Student Cabinet, said she often hears from her peers that they are passionate about climate justice.

“They care because they’re concerned about where our future is headed, and they want to make it the best possible future that we can,” Worster said. “We’re going to be the ones making all of the decisions and doing the work impacting our climate and our environment. I think students just want to be informed and knowledgeable about the decisions they make and how those will impact our environment.”

Worster said part of what she enjoyed about the Symposium was the opportunity to connect with fellow students from different parts of the state.

“It has definitely been eye-opening to talk to students from different areas just because it’s so different from where I am from,” Worster said. “Just seeing their perspective on things and how different things impact them differently than they would impact me based on their environment is really cool to see.”

To end the Symposium, attendees engaged in a discussion about the vision of a Green Schools Network, a concept recently established through state legislation to support environmental education and initiatives within public schools and school administrative units. Youth in attendance at the Symposium organized and ran a “Vision Lab” to brainstorm a wide range of concepts for the Green Schools Network, which will be designed using the input received. In 2026, the Green Schools Network will issue a report to the Maine Legislature, including any recommendations for new legislation to help support the goals of the network.