AUGUSTA – The state’s greatest treasures are not its famed mountains, rivers or ocean, Gov. Angus King told a joint session of the Legislature on Tuesday night. In his fifth State of the State address, halfway through his final term as governor, King said the state’s greatest treasures “are the children we raise. They are the true measure of our worth, and how we prepare them for their own lives will be the best gauge of our success.”

King’s lofty goal is to make Maine children “among the best-educated in the world,” he told legislators.

In a speech repeatedly interrupted by applause, King stressed “community and opportunity.” He said, “If we lose our community, we lose our spirit, we lose our identity, we lose our soul, and we lose the things that make all else valuable. And if it’s lost, all the taxes and government programs in the world won’t bring it back.”

With precious few details, King proposed a number of initiatives to make health insurance more affordable, increase the number of college graduates, continue the fight against domestic violence through the creation of a domestic violence coordinator, remove mercury from Maine lakes and streams, redefine forest management to focus on results instead of regulations, and work on “Smart Production” which will help industry work toward zero environmental impact.

King proposed the sale of state-owned liquor stores and proposed a “Smart Growth” package of initiatives to preserve neighborhoods, to keep communities livable and to strengthen the natural resources economy of our rural areas.

But he quickly returned to seeing the state economy “through the lens of its children.”

King also visited the political realities of the session and issued a plea to save his favorite project, $50 million for computers for seventh- and eighth-graders, which is said to be threatened by the budget deficit. “This can be our niche, our comparative advantage, our calling card. This will put us on the technology map and will signal to the world that we intend to invest boldly in the future of our children,” he said.

Hockey great Wayne Gretzky is not often quoted in political speeches. But King used a Gretzky line on Tuesday to support the laptop program. When asked why he was so much better than other hockey players, Gretzky reportedly replied, “I skate to where the puck is going to be. Everybody else skates to where it is.”

King used the reference to stress the importance of getting young students to use computers early in their education.

“We know where the puck is going to be; the question is whether we’ll have the courage, the imagination, and the will to go for it,” said King.

The state and its children have made startling progress under the King administration but have miles to go, the governor said, referring to jobs, programs and services that either directly or indirectly help young Mainers.

Since the winter of 1995, the state has added 67,000 new jobs and last fall had the lowest unemployment rate since 1945. More parents having jobs helps their kids, said King.

In six years, the child protection division of the Department of Human Services has reduced its backlog from 2,700 cases to 203 cases. Adoptions have increased fivefold in recent years. “That’s good news for the kids of Maine,” King said.

King loves to personalize his messages by introducing residents who illustrate a point. On Tuesday night, he introduced and thanked Pat Beaulieu, an adoption worker from Lewiston, and Joy Pottle, a caseworker from Ellsworth.

Maine can now brag that it has the fourth-highest rate of insured children in the country. “Because of our success, we are one of only 10 states slated to receive additional funds that other states failed to allocate,” King said.

The governor pointed to success in improved mental health services to children and the state’s national leadership in K-12 education. Last fall, the national Children’s Rights Council rated Maine as “the number one state in the country to raise a child. And we are not done yet. Our vision is that Maine people will be the best-educated in the world,” he said.

Children today are growing up in a world their parents would never recognize. “Too many of our kids are growing up without a net and can miss the subtle messages, role models, support, encouragement, and general guidance coming from the family. These messages either aren’t there or must come from one beleaguered parent who must carry the entire weight,” the governor said.

He challenged residents to get involved in the Maine Mentoring Partnership and other programs to “commit ourselves and our resources to strengthening our communities and kids, one by one.”

King introduced Charles Asbury from Rockland who joined the Big Brother program to mentor Walter Hezik of Rockland and Waite Albro who joined Pathway Partners at Mount Abram High School and his protege Paul Zucco.

In concluding his fifth State of the State address after speaking for about an hour, King summarized by saying that “decades from now today’s kindergarten students will sit in this place and grapple with the challenges of their times and look back on how we faced the challenges of ours.”

He ended by saying that the leaders and citizens of our time must “make conscious choices to seize the future and to respond to the challenges and opportunities of change with all the optimism and vision we can muster.”