Maine School Administrative District (MSAD) 11 is poised to approve or deny an extremely controversial school-based medical clinic on Thursday, the last day of the school year, during a special school board meeting.
“This is one of the most sleazy, non-transparent school boards I’ve ever seen,” parents rights activist Alvin Lui, president of Courage Is A Habit, told The Maine Wire.
MSAD 11, which serves Gardiner, West Gardiner, Pittston, and Randolph, has become embroiled in a variety of controversies in recent months, not the least of which is the board’s effort to establish a school-based medical clinic that would go well beyond the writ of a traditional school nurse.
According to opponents, the clinic would be able to prescribe psychoactive drugs for mental conditions such as depression or drugs to facilitate gender transitions without parental knowledge or consent.
The clinic, though possibly branded as part of the school, would be operated by the third party HealthReach Community Health Centers, a non-profit that, according to tax documents, made $11.7 million from prescribing drugs in 2023.
The company also operates a school-based clinic in Fairfield, which sent a student home with an unlabeled bag of Zoloft, a mood-altering antidepressant.
The student’s father complained, but health center representatives told him that they were legally allowed to prescribe the medication to his daughter without his consent or knowledge.
Opponents of the Gardiner clinic are concerned that it would open the door for similar incidents in their children’s district.
Despite the concerns of parents and parental rights activists, the board is pushing forward with the clinic, which liberal members have claimed will simply help children and staff access routine medical care.
According to the agenda for Thursday’s meeting, the board will enter an “executive session” that will be closed to the public, where they will discuss the clinic’s memorandum of understanding (MOU).
Lui believes that the board has intentionally delayed reviewing the MOU in order to push the controversial vote back to the end of the school year.
Months before the vote was scheduled for June 12, the board first put the clinic on the agenda on November 27 last year, the day before Thanksgiving, when parents would be less likely to see it added.
He also accused the board of violating its own policies by failing to put the school-based clinic through the standard committee process, in which members of the public are allowed to ask questions about proposed policy changes.
Another parental rights activist, Allen Sarvinas, director of Parents’ Rights in Education (PRE), also expressed his outrage over the board’s failure to host a committee or field questions on the clinic.
“All PRE Parents have asked for is a committee meeting to discuss and possibly pass a parent’s Right to Know policy due to so many red flags. Such as the ONLY other HealthReach clinic in a school being sued for giving a student pharmaceutical drugs in an unmarked baggy,” said Sarvinas.
HealthReach assistant director of operations Diandra Staples previously admitted that some students choose to conceal the treatments they receive at school-based clinics from their parents.
Following the closed executive session, the board will discuss and vote on the clinic publicly. Currently, the board maintains a slim liberal majority, leaving a significant possibility that the clinic will be pushed through at the last minute.
During the public comment portion of a March board meeting, Rep. Mike Soboleski (R-Phillips) revealed that the school is not properly zoned to house a health clinic operated by a private organization like HealthReach.
It appears that the zoning issue has simply been ignored because, according to Lui, the board has not taken action to address the issue and is nonetheless pushing forward with its vote on the clinic.
The Gardiner School Board has been embroiled in a variety of other controversies throughout the past year, including one involving former member Matthew Lillibridge, who appeared to threaten Lui with a rifle after the parental rights activist offered additional information on the proposed clinic.
Another member, who currently sits on the board, Joanne O’Brien, called on social media for any Trump-supporting parents to be “forcibly shut down.” In another post, she accused girls who did not want to share locker rooms with transgender-identifying males of “bullying.”
