In the latest video for Maine Wire TV, Editor-in-Chief Steve Robinson sat down with Rep. Heidi Sampson (R-Alfred) and Rep. Gary Drinkwater (R-Milford) to discuss a range of issues impacting Maine’s public schools, including healthcare mandates and curriculum transparency.
Rep. Drinkwater is the sponsor LD 51, a bill that would restore the philosophical and religious exemptions for public school vaccine mandates. That bill was killed on party line votes in May, and you can read more about it here.
Those exemptions were removed in 2019 by the State Legislature, prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, and public school vaccine mandates do not apply to the Covid-19 jabs — yet.
But there remain a high number of unvaccinated children, especially from immigrant communities, who are at risk of being ejected from Maine schools due to their religious or philosophical objections to the pre-Covid schedule of vaccines mandated by Maine law.
According to public records obtained by the Maine Wire in relation to the 2021-2022 Maine School Immunization Assessment, thousands of Maine school children were assessed for medical, philosophical, or religious exemptions from vaccine mandates. (We’ll have more on that soon…)
Rep. Sampson is a former member of the Maine Board of Education — the first homeschooler ever appointed to that board — and a longtime conservative advocate in the world of education policy.
Sampson responds to Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin’s comment earlier this year that “academic learning is definitely going to take a backseat” to left-wing political projects in schools. (We’re taking some artistic license here with that framing, but you can read about the comment and its context here.)
Watch on Twitter or Rumble:
