Inside the First Year of the Maine Outdoor School for All Program

With summer on the horizon, students across the state are looking forward to getting out of their classrooms and spending months exploring the outdoors with friends. But more than 1,000 of Maine’s youth have already combined the power of classroom learning with outdoor experiences, thanks to the Maine Outdoor School for All (MOSFA) initiative.

MOSFA is a coordinated network of eight outdoor education organizations working hard to ensure every student in Maine has access to high-quality, residential nature-learning programs.

In early 2025, the MOSFA network made Maine history by coming together to advocate for a bill that granted statewide access to outdoor learning programs. The bill passed and, while it wasn’t funded by the state, the MOSFA network raised enough funding from private foundations to run a first-year pilot — and it’s seen remarkable success so far.

The Pilot Year

“Outdoor school has a long tradition in Maine,” says Ryder Scott, executive director of the 4-H Centers at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension. “Summer camps and day trips are great opportunities, but outdoor school is truly immersive education.”

The passing of the bill established the outdoor school program at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, making Scott and his team funding administrators. Scott’s vision for the MOSFA program is shared among other outdoor school leaders: “We view this as an equity issue. We had a notion that we could provide life-changing outdoor experiences for all Maine students, regardless of family status, school budget, or zip code.”

In the 2025-2026 school year, the MOSFA program made huge strides toward accomplishing that goal. The team worked to secure just under $450,000 in private grant funding. It costs the MOSFA program around $395 per student to facilitate the program, which includes two nights and three days of meals, lodging, and environmental science instruction outdoors and in outdoor school facilities. MOSFA’s ability to garner those funds in private grants enabled it to serve more than 1,000 students from 11 of Maine’s 16 counties.

“We’re very proud of the fact that we were able to stand up a website, create a grant process, and prioritize program quality — all without the full funding amount we need,” says Scott.

Getting the Most Out of the Outdoors

The pilot program has set the tone for what immersive outdoor learning programs can accomplish, primarily due to the deliberate choices the program designers have made:

• Full grade-level participation: Districts get to choose which grade level they want to support, which helps institutionalize the program. “Kids coming up through elementary school know that, when they reach that grade, they’re going to have this amazing experience,” says Scott. “It becomes part of the culture of the community.”

• Hands-on learning: Students in the pilot program engaged closely with field-based science, handling wildlife, gathering data on ecosystems, and even taking compost out to the garden after their evening meals.

• High academic standards: The outdoor school organizations align their curricula to both the Next Generation Science Standards and each individual school’s needs. When one school in the pilot wanted to focus on leadership development, for example, the outdoor school centered its hands-on learning around those skills.

So far, these overnight trips have helped students and teachers see each other in a different light, learning about the world around them and the people who inhabit it. Educators have seen students develop greater social-emotional health and blossom in outdoor settings. “A student who’s not necessarily the star academically in a classroom will often thrive in the outdoor school environment,” says Scott. “We’ve heard that consistently from teachers in the pilot program.”

This Is Just the Beginning

While the initial results from MOSFA’s pilot year have been sincerely impressive, Scott and his team know this is just the start of something even greater for Maine. The goal now is to secure state and private funding totaling $6.2 million, the amount needed to serve 14,000 students throughout the state each year. In 2026, the team is working toward that goal by generating the funds to serve 50% of that number.

“The private sector can’t foot the bill for this forever,” says Scott. “We hope the state sees that, even without its financial support, we were able to start up the grant program and it’s been quite successful.”

When fully funded, MOSFA will be able to hire program coordinators in each of the five designated regions of the state who would get to know the school districts in their region, understand the barriers students face to outdoor learning, and match schools with the right outdoor learning programs.

It’s a big dream, but one that’s well underway already. And as the 1,000 students in the pilot program know, it’s one worth pursuing.