For more than 20 years, Cultivating Community and Portland Public Schools have worked together to build experiential learning programs tied to school gardens, nutrition, STEM, Wabanaki Studies and food systems. This has involved incredible work and dedication by parents, community members, local businesses and state, regional and national organizations: SNAP-Ed, FoodCorps, Audubon and Cumberland County Food Security Council, to name a few.

Portland Public Schools both faces challenges and has advantages that don’t exist in the same way in other parts of the state. One of those advantages is the robust support network of organizations and agencies that exist to help with programming, such as the school garden-based experiential learning that takes place throughout our schools.

Amid the chaos and loss of the pandemic, one positive was that these programs received a huge boost. For the past two years, Portland Public Schools has used federal funding to provide schools with experiential learning teachers to connect our students with healthy food, social/emotional learning, physical well-being and deeper connections to the curriculum through the use of school gardens. Now that COVID-19 relief funding is expiring, we’re in danger of losing these incredible programs.

A bill before the Legislature, L.D. 1682, could help solve that problem, not just in Portland, but in any school or district that wants to take advantage of the myriad positives associated with school gardens and food education. This bill would allow districts to slowly phase the costs associated with garden and food educators and the integrated curriculum they support into the local school budgets over time, instead of all in one year, which is often very difficult. This is a bill that would build much-needed program stability.

It’s no wonder it passed the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry unanimously. Now it’s up to Gov. Mills, Sen. Duson and Rep. Collings and other Members of the Appropriations Committee to fund the application of this important law in this year’s supplemental budget and appropriations process.

According to the Maine Environmental Education Association, the vast majority of experiential learning that happens in Maine is tied to school gardens. But according to a survey by the Maine School Garden Network, one of the biggest hurdles to schools implementing experiential learning programs is a lack of capacity. In other words, people power.

Without dedicated staff in our schools, gardens and their many benefits become one more thing someone in the schools must attempt to manage. Without any capacity on existing teachers’ plates, gardens quickly turn into eyesores and greenhouses become warehouses.

Our children and our teachers deserve better; they deserve vibrant and joyous spaces in which to learn.

L.D. 1682 will help districts build their own programs by supporting the creation of garden educator positions that meet their unique needs. It’s no secret that school funding is always more limited than what is needed. Portland is no different and this year, particularly as COVID relief funding dries up, we are facing the real possibility of losing these incredibly valuable programs that help foster deeper neural connections with lessons, support children’s social and emotional well-being, and provide kids in our city with connections to science, the environment and the people and ecosystems that produce our food right here in Maine.

It is our hope Gov. Mills and our representatives on the Appropriations Committee prioritize experiential learning that benefits students today – and our communities in the long run.