A version of this article was originally published in The Daily Brief, our Maine politics newsletter. Sign up here for daily news and insight from politics editor Michael Shepherd.
One of the themes in national conservative politics over the past few years has been the backlash to educational policies on LGBTQ and other issues, and Maine has seen this play out locally.
Last year, the Hampden-area school district paid a settlement to conservative activist Shawn McBreairty after trying to ban him from meetings. In the November election, Windham will vote on an ordinance allowing recalls of local officials that was prompted by strife before the school board. Tiny Sorrento shot down a similar ordinance after a dispute over school library books.
Many districts are now altering their policies around public-comment periods, something that the Sun Journal and Morning Sentinel looked at in an in-depth piece on the issue over the weekend that called attention to free-speech concerns. Among the items at issue is a 2019 law that made schools take public comment.
The context: The Maine School Management Association, which represents superintendents and school boards, has said districts should consider expressly prohibiting offensive speech and complaints about specific teachers and students at meetings. Many districts already have policies like this, a review by the newspapers found. One district goes as far to say that only positive comments should be allowed.
The central figure motivating these changes is McBreairty. He has referred to specific teachers in public and is fighting lawsuits filed against him by the Hampden- and Hermon-area school districts. The Hermon suit came after he referred to a teacher a “sexual predator,” something a judge ruled earlier this year was stated as fact yet was unsupported.
It was a 2019 law sponsored by a Democrat that made Maine school districts set aside time for comments at the beginning of meetings but allows boards to set “time limits and conduct standards.” It passed easily with support from the Maine Education Association, which cited examples of teachers being cut off from speaking on certain issues in public.
The superintendents group called the law unnecessary after it was proposed, since almost all districts allowed comment. Now that group is saying the vagueness of the law led it to craft its draft policy. Some free-speech groups told the Sun Journal and Morning Sentinel that reining in comment in these kinds of ways may be unconstitutional.
What’s next: These lines for school boards are vague, and they are likely to be settled in court decisions in and out of Maine, including the upcoming ones involving McBreairty. While the 2019 law was not marked by politics, any future discussion in the Legislature is likely to be. It means that there may be no resolution here for a while.
