Maine to pilot Outdoor School for All

Thanks to private funding and the passage of bipartisan legislation, thousands more Maine students will benefit from overnight outdoor educational experiences in the 2025-26 school year 

Thousands of Maine students will participate in transformative overnight outdoor educational experiences in the coming school year — at no cost to their districts.  

Maine Outdoor School for All is launching this fall thanks to $450,000 secured from private foundations, including the Betterment Fund, Horizon Foundation and Quimby Family Foundation, and bipartisan legislation establishing the program sponsored by state Sen. Rick Bennett and signed into law in May by Gov. Janet Mills. 

The program will be administered by University of Maine Cooperative Extension, which will make grants to certified outdoor learning centers, enabling them to provide students in grades four through eight immersive, three-day, two-night outdoor educational experiences.