A former educator in Maine School Administrative District 75 (MSAD 75), who resigned following the district’s adoption of a “transgender and gender-expansive” student policy, launched a petition drive in defense of students’ right to free speech that was rejected last week by the district’s Board of Directors.
MSAD 75 covers schools in Topsham, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, and Harpswell.
The longtime MSAD 75 substitute teacher and paraprofessional Rebecca Brooks resigned in November after the school board approved the controversial transgender student policy following months of heated debate surrounding the policy’s balancing of students’ right to privacy and parents’ rights to be informed.
[THE FACTS: No, Letting Boys Use the Girls’ Bathroom Is Not “Settled Law” in Maine…]
In her Nov. 17 resignation letter, Brooks, who worked in the district for 17 years, wrote that the board’s adoption of the policy “is leading this community down a treacherous rabbit hole.”
“This district is crossing a dangerous boundary by entertaining the transgender dysphoria phenomenon,” Brooks wrote to MSAD 75 Superintendent Heidi O’Leary and the Board of Directors, arguing that the new policy would create a “hostile environment” by allowing “this age inappropriate topic into our schools.”
The stated purpose of the policy in question, ACAAA, is to “foster a learning environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment and bullying,” and to “assist in the educational and social integration of transgender and gender-expansive students.”
The policy advises that in case of a student whose parents are unaware of their child identifying as transgender or “gender-expansive,” “the Superintendent should be consulted, and the matter resolved on a case-by-case basis” before the student’s parents are informed.
The policy also allows transgender or “gender-expansive” students to use bathrooms, locker rooms and other school facilities in accordance with their “gender identity.”
Brooks’ petition, however, focused solely on section D part 3 of the policy, that requires students “be addressed by all school staff, (including but not limited to) substitutes, coaches, volunteers and other students by the name and pronoun corresponding to their gender identity that is asserted at school.”
In her petition, Brooks called the policy a “direct affront to students’ 1st Amendment rights.”
“With this policy every student from elementary to high school is required to conform to an individual’s preferred pronoun ideology,” the petition reads.
At the MSAD 75 Board of Director’s March 28 meeting, Brooks told the board during public comment that the ACAAA policy had a “chilling effect” on freedom of speech.
“The attempt to use children to silence anyone who is uncomfortable with the ideology is nothing short of bullying,” Brooks said. “As I have said before, every student everywhere deserves a voice regardless of whether others disagree with what they say.”
“Our very freedoms given to us as citizens of this country guarantee those rights cannot, nor should they be, stolen. Especially when done so to placate any one person or group,” she said.
Another speaker during public comment, Brian Roy of Bowdoin, told the board that he stands in “complete solidarity” with Brooks, and that her petition makes a “very modest request” to protect students’ rights against “compelled speech,” and to protect the district from potential future lawsuits.
Later in the March 28 meeting, MSAD 75 Board Chair Hutson Hayward acknowledged receiving Brooks’ community petition, but after conferring with the district’s legal counsel concluded that a change to the policy compelling the use of certain pronouns could violate other district policies or state law.
Hayward said that he was informed by the district’s legal counsel that “intentionally using incorrect pronouns or names of students or staff could be considered illegal harassment and/or discrimination based on their gender identity,” which would violate the district’s anti-bullying policy and state anti-discrimination laws.
Hayward added that the district’s policy is consistent with position of the Maine Department of Education, Maine Human Rights Commission, and model ACAAA policies of the Maine School Management Association.
He then referred questions regarding potential disciplinary action taken under ACAAA to the district’s administration.
The board’s rejection of Brooks’ proposed change to the policy was covered by the local news outlet the Harpswell Anchor, in an April 2 article entitled “Official says proposed trans student policy change could promote harassment.”
In a letter dated April 2 obtained by the Maine Wire, Brooks responded to the Harpswell Anchor’s coverage of her petition, claiming that journalists at the outlet were “working overtime to disparage me and misrepresent the true nature of the petition I created.”
Brooks wrote that her petition “in no way is promoting harassment or bullying,” and that it “was only created to protect students’ First Amendment rights.”
“I find it quite ironic that journalists (a group of people who cherish their freedom of press) are seeking to dismiss this fact in an effort to villainize me and frankly the 300 plus citizens, including educators, who signed the petition,” Brooks wrote.
Brooks reiterated her concerned that students may be “trapped by the chilling effect” of the policy.
“There is hard work to be done in our schools. Our students are suffering both emotionally and academically,” she wrote. “I can only hope that MSAD75 board members begin addressing the more critical issues facing our students, rather than continue using them as pawns in a vile display of gaslighting.”
So the masses at SAD75 are now held by harassment if they don’t play to a minority that suffer from a mental disorder. They can suffer harassment for being violated in their desire to maintain their privacy from someone that is suffering from the mental disorder and have no recourse because the school has given the power to the dysphoric to violate everyone else’s privacy! This is a direct violation to the bill of right that forces everyone to go along with the mentally ill. Infringing on the right to free speech, and the right to privacy! This shows the SAD75 is on the path of corruption and harassing student that don’t embrace the made up gender dysphoria, and makes it look like the system is fostering groomers. Prove me wrong! Because I’m not, there are some great teachers there,but there are some people in the system that don’t belong.
The voters better elect some better board members because the current ones aren’t serving the students well. What they are doing here is Marxist 101.
Teachers and students who prefer not to address gender dysphoric students by their chosen pronouns should consider addressing them by their last name only.
No one should take a knee to this childish pronoun bullshit.
Compelled speech is hell.
In Canada you are now FORCED to provide and state everyone’s pronouns in all Government functions like court, schools, etc. Even if you are not trans.
It first starts out in schools and then becomes mandatory even at work. If you do not resist this now, you will end up like Jordan Peterson and our fallen neighbors to the North.
Can they read? what are their math scores?
Why can not Maine find a full number of teachers to meet the needs of the schools.
Are they close to a collage?
My how this has progressed from the Out Maine recommended curriculum of two years ago. Fear of repercussion is not the way to bring a free people together.. Schools have had anti-bullying programs for the last 30-40 years.. It changed very little if anything. Now the ones who were probably bullied in some way or form are getting even and doing the bullying. If the intended result is to bring people together bullying is not the way to do it. What this ultimately does is make the ones pushing these mandates onto children feel good about themselves.
I can’t imagine what the environment in the schools must be from those who don’t agree with this being literally shoved down their throats.
If these adults implementing such policies were not suffering from tunnel vision they would realize that you can’t tell or mandate that someone respect another. Respect is earned!
Solution—-Vote those responsible out of office. In a lack of confidence Vote down the school budget. More importantly Vote the legislators responsible out of office. Vote like we are at a serious crossroads cause we are.
Can someone ask the so-called adults running the schools why they love talking sex with minors?
Seems a bit like pedophilia to me.
Can someone explain the term “gender expansive” to me please?
In many ways, this term confirms that much of the “genda benda agenda” madness is about one-upping the last known gender “breakthrough.”
In the same way new and improved tattoos, piercings, makeup, hairstyles, hair colors, and wardrobe affectations are used to say “look at me” instead of looking at “them,” a new variation on the variations is called for, in a race to the bottom of the common sense swamp.
And our devoted public servants, to whom each new distortion of traditions and norms is a badge of honor, bow down to whatever form of deviancy is served up. And they circle around to celebrate it.
Perhaps one day they’ll be around long enough to attend the funeral of some troubled soul who they encouraged, aided, and abetted on their wayward journey on the j-axis.
The stated purpose of the policy in question, ACAAA, is to “foster a learning environment that is safe and free from discrimination, harassment and bullying,” and to “assist in the educational and social integration of transgender and gender-expansive students.”
Each of these terms works in both directions. They want us to discriminate between those who accept biological reality and those who don’t. They harass us into using certifiably improper language in dealing with some, but not others. They bully us into using language we find offensive and incorrect, and bully teenage girls into accepting and sharing bathrooms, locker rooms, and field trip sleeping accommodations with make believe girls who get their jollies by harassing others into accepting unreasonable and fraudulent recognition and privileges.
Perhaps it’s time for some create lawyering to look deeper into the legal principles involved, going beyond humoring and coddling the mentally troubled and their faddish demands. As a minimum they should have to wear large badges, readable from across the room, identifying their preferred pronouns. How the hell is anyone supposed to remember every fellow student who wants to be assigned a different pronoun than societal convention of centuries grants them?
Or, as someone suggested, they go by their last name and deal with it. Or be called “Sherman,” which covers all the bases: she, her, and man.
“Hey you, we’re gonna need a lot more hand-baskets over here, STAT!”
And we need to be on the lookout for cuckoo nests; I think the population is exploding beyond measure.
Another Monty Python skit come to life….Men who want to be mice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK92NYwBMts All has to do with MENTAL HEALTH.
New England White Network supports all teachers who stand against the tranny mafia. Trannies and their supporters have no place in a healthy society.
https://gab.com/Unenrolled/posts/112280972055738925
One of the same useless and corrupt government agencies which brought us the mandates for C-19 and the death jabs is where all this pronoun BS originates: https://www.edi.nih.gov/blog/communities/what-are-gender-pronouns-why-do-they-matter
Still trust the political hacks and bureaucrats in the DC Swamp?