Democratic candidate for Maine governor Hannah Pingree speaks during an endorsement announcement Thursday at the Maine Education Association headquarters in Augusta. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

AUGUSTA — The Maine teachers union endorsed Hannah Pingree in the race for governor Thursday, giving the Democratic candidate an opportunity to lay out some of her top priorities for schools.

During a news conference outside Maine Education Association headquarters, Pingree said that, if elected, she would continue to have the state fund 55% of the cost of education. She also would try to raise teacher salaries more quickly. And she said she wants to study — and potentially limit — screen time for students.

Pingree also addressed concerns about declining standardized test scores in Maine schools, saying she wants to work with teachers to address the issue.

“It’s not about blaming anybody,” Pingree said. “Everybody wants kids to be successful. Everybody wants kids to be reading at grade level and doing the kind of math they need to be ready for jobs and higher education. It really is up to all of us to figure out how we get there.”

The endorsement is a nod of approval from one of the most powerful blocs in Democratic politics. It’s also a signal that the union, which supported Gov. Janet Mills’ reelection in 2022, wants lawmaking in Augusta to continue along its current trajectory.

Pingree is running against Republican Bobby Charles and independent Rick Bennett in the governor’s race. The three are vying to replace Mills, a Democrat under whom Pingree led the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future for six years.

Pingree’s endorsement from the 23,000-member teachers union did not come as a surprise. The association said Thursday that Pingree, a former lawmaker, had a “100% pro-education voting record” while in office, while Bennett, a state senator from Oxford, received a 58% rating from the MEA on its most recent legislative scorecard.

The association cited Bennett’s votes against three broad state budget bills, along with votes against killing a proposed school voucher program and for a review of teacher mentoring programs, as marks against him.

Charles, who has not held office before, has criticized the teachers unions, blaming them in part for Maine’s recent dip in test scores. Charles made it part of his policy platform to “eliminate so-called ‘woke’ indoctrination from classrooms” and has said that Maine schools “should prepare every child for success, not teach liberal ideology.”

Mills expanded state funded education services during her eight years in office, including committing the state to funding 55% of the cost of K-12 education for the first time since that funding level was approved by voters in 2004. Maine was one of the first states in the country to start offering free school meals to all students in 2022, and the state also implemented free community college for high school graduates under Mills.

Jesse Hargrove, president of the Maine Education Association and a high school social studies teacher, told reporters Thursday that workforce issues are a top priority the union wants to see Maine’s next governor address. “That is both the on ramp into the profession and making sure our educators can retire with dignity,” he said.

Hannah Pingree, the Democratic candidate for Maine governor, speaks during an endorsement announcement at the Maine Education Association headquarters in Augusta on Thursday. (Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer)

Pingree, who served as speaker of the Maine House of Representatives from 2008-10, appears to be leading in the governor’s race. Recent polling has shown her with a double-digit lead over both Charles and Bennett, and the $3 million her campaign has raised is more than the combined haul of the other two candidates.

The latest budget signed into law by Mills raised the minimum salary for teachers from $40,000 to $50,000 by 2029. Pingree said she would seek to move up the timeline for implementing the new minimum, and that she would also like to see cost-of-living adjustments established so that the minimum salary will automatically continue to increase.

“I look forward to working with the MEA to ensure we are paying teachers and educators what they deserve,” she said.

The next governor will take over after results from a biennial national assessment released last year found Maine fourth graders’ math and reading skills are among the lowest in the country and have dropped the most of any state from pre-COVID-19 levels.

The 2024 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card, found just 33% of Maine fourth graders are proficient in math and 26% in reading, both below the national average.

Pingree said she wants to work with teachers, who have told her they are sometimes struggling to engage kids, to improve test scores.

“We need to prepare teachers and support teachers with the kind of curriculum that is working across the country,” she said.

Pingree also said Thursday that she wants to study the prevalence of — and possibly limit — screentime and the use of artificial intelligence in schools. Such a move would come after Maine moved this year to ban cellphone use in schools.

“We need to continue to work together to cut down on distractions in our classrooms and look hard at how much screen time is too much,” Pingree said.