| Nathan R.L. Burnett

Why run?

I believe in education and technology. I'd like to see our state ensure a living wage for anyone who works 40 hours a week. I'd like to see healthcare decoupled from employment, so that if you can't work 40 hours a week you still have access to healthcare, whether through a nationwide medicare for all approach or a statewide mainecare approach.

Emerging from the Pandemic, we need broadband expansion across the whole state. Telecommuting, an approach many workplaces are still employing, is not possible without better internet infrastructure. Additionally, as the oldest state in the nation, we have a set of residents in our community that are unable to rightsize their living situations because their homes aren't connected to the internet and that makes them unsellable. When I had to teach during the Pandemic, I couldn’t do it from home because my internet connection wasn’t strong enough to stream my document camera with high enough fidelity for math examples to be seen clearly by my students. I’ve been in my house for a decade and am still connected to the internet by copper cable.

Lastly, and on a slightly larger scale, I am concerned about the future of work in our society with respect to automation and the efficiencies that it brings. I teach AP Computer Science Principles and would like to see more requirements for our students to be made aware of the possibilities in their future. I'd like to see our students all exposed to actual 21st century curriculums that require skill development relevant to the jobs of today and tomorrow. We are already well into a technological revolution that is being as disruptive to the 20th century model of work and life as the industrial revolution was to 19th century work lives.