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A Maine organization that has provided training and assistance to educators for decades could close its doors after the state awarded a multimillion dollar contract to an out-of-state company backed by private equity and venture capital firms, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Maine Roads to Quality was created in 1999 by the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University of Southern Maine to offer professional development to child care providers across the state. The organization provides guidance to more than 10,000 Maine child care providers each year.

For much of its existence, Maine Roads has been funded by contracts provided by Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services. That lifeline evaporated last week.

The state offered a pair of contracts worth an estimated $10 million over two years to Shine Early Learning, a New York-based company that offers similar services to childcare centers, home-based providers and public schools in more than 30 states.

“The University of Southern Maine was notified on Sept. 21 that its proposals for two state contracts supporting the Maine Roads to Quality Professional Development Network were not selected for continued funding, thus ending a nearly three-decade partnership,” Samantha Warren, spokesperson for the University of Maine System, said in a statement.

Maine Roads employs more than 30 people. Warren said “layoffs are expected” without a renewal of the DHHS contracts.

The contracts specify Shine Early Learning must employ at least 10 staff members in Maine. Shine Early Learning’s proposals also specify it plans to use artificial intelligence to do much of the work Maine Roads’ human staffers currently perform.

The company plans to implement an “AI-powered family navigation assistant,” an AI-assisted employee vetting tool and an AI agent that will manage a provider registry, according to its applications.

Lindsay Hammes, a spokesperson for DHHS, noted the company has only been offered conditional awards and that no contracts have been ratified yet. The full value of the new contracts “will become public once they are finalized,” she said.

Shine Early Learning underbid Maine Roads by some $2 million between the two contracts, according to documents obtained by the Portland Press Herald. The company did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.

One contract is for coaching, credentialing, and training of early childhood educators and care providers. The other is for providing a DHHS-approved training plan “designed to improve quality” of child care services and early childhood educators, according to the state’s request for proposals.

Those services have historically been housed under a single contract, Warren said.

When state offices ask for contract bids, they score each of the proposals on a scale from 0 to 100. Shine Early Learning’s bid for the coaching contract received a 97, while its proposal for the training plan got a perfect 100.

Maine Roads received about 73 points on each of its proposals. DHHS said the scores were issued in accordance with the processes laid out in its requests for proposals, but did not specify how Shine Early Learning received such high marks.

Shine Early Learning’s website touts the company’s “data-driven services and solutions” to “accelerate child and family outcomes.”

The company is owned by Acelero, Inc. — a firm seeded with a “strategic investment” from BlackRock, one of the world’s largest private equity companies. Several members from BlackRock and other venture capital firms who invested in Acelero subsequently joined the company’s board, according to a 2022 news release.

The private equity company’s investment in Acelero, and Shine Early Learning by extension, was made with the goal of “extending Acelero’s footprint and deepen(ing) its impact across communities,” BlackRock’s senior portfolio manager said at the time.

BlackRock handles more than $11 trillion in assets. The firm has been criticized for being “too big to fail,” purchasing everything from electric grids to billions’ of dollars of real estate across the country.

Activists have scrutinized BlackRock for investing in companies contributing to climate change and mass surveillance. The United Nations in 2025 issued a report saying BlackRock is complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza due to its investments in several weapons manufacturers.

In Maine, BlackRock acts as one of the primary investment managers for Maine’s Public Employee Retirement System.

Maine Roads plans to appeal DHHS’ decision on the contracts issued to Shine Early Learning, said Warren, the UMaine system spokesperson.

“In the meantime, the university is committed to continuing to provide high-quality services for Maine’s early childhood education community through the end of the current contract and supporting potentially affected employees, many of whom have served the field through the program for more than 15 years,” she said.