The Maine Department of Education (MDOE) leveraged the U.S. Department of Education's Rethink K-12 Education Models grant to provide significant funding to districts to support innovative solutions to persistent problems of practice--particularly those heightened by the pandemic. MDOE's grant began in fall 2020. It prioritized innovations focused…

The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program was launched as an effort to address the loss of access to free and reduced-price school meals due to widespread school closures at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools reopened in a shifting mix of fully virtual, hybrid, and in-person formats and families lacked consistent access…