Long-time U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said “all politics is local,” and he could just have easily been talking about mounting distemper in Maine over school boards and state educational associations that silence parents and promote left-of-center ideologies as the wards of Boston.
As Virginia showed the nation four years ago when Loudon County education administrators tried to stifle news about serious abuses of their transgender bathroom policy, school board politics can transform a state. Voter anger about that issue fueled conservative Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Clinton moneyman “Good Times” Terry McCauliffe in the governor’s race.
In recent months, controversies over gender fluidity in school sports in Maine went all the way to the White House and precipitated a clash of state and federal authorities not seen since the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
That is why next week’s school board elections in districts across Maine are particularly important — today, schools face the difficult choice of either complying with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender-identifying males from female sports and spaces, or following Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) and the Maine Principals’ Association (MPA) policy of letting boys dominate in girls’ sports.
Two conservative-leaning boards, Hodgdon’s MSAD 70 in Aroostook County and Regional School Unit (RSU) 24 in Hancock County, have already rescinded many aspects of their pro-transgender policies.
Next week, some school boards are in a position to flip ideologically, possibly opening the door for more districts to rescind their pro-transgender policies if enough concerned parents turn out to vote. Here are a few a few districts to watch:
MSAD 60
Maine School Administrative District (MSAD) 60, encompassing North Berwick, Berwick, and Lebanon, could shift to a more conservative majority based on two elections, neither of which includes incumbents.
In Berwick, voters will have to choose between George Claassen and Marissa Tasker for a three-year term on the board.
According to Claassen’s campaign website, he is primarily concerned with fiscal responsibility and academic excellence. Though his website does not address the school’s transgender policy, his push for transparency, fiscal responsibility, and higher academic standards does suggest his generally conservative views.
Claassen also holds a perfect 100 score from Parents’ Rights in Education (PRE), an organization that often expresses its opposition to pro-transgender and LGBTQ+ policies in schools.
While Tasker also expresses concerns about fiscal responsibility and academic standards on her website, previously homeschooled her children, and promises that she is not running to “push an agenda,” there are indications she is the less conservative candidate on various points.
Though she has also avoided discussing the transgender policy issue during her campaign, and her position is not clear, Tasker’s concerns about “gun violence and discrimination” in the classroom could hint at somewhat more liberal beliefs than her opponent.
She has also received an endorsement from the district’s Teachers’ Association and promises to prioritize students’ “emotional and educational safety.”
She is not ranked by PRE.
The Maine Wire reached out to Tasker, asking for her views on the controversial transgender issue, but she did not immediately respond.
The district has another contested race in Berwick between Melissa Cyr and James DuPries.
DuPrie’s current campaign does not appear to be very active, as he has no website and his campaign Facebook page has no posts more recent than October. However, he has previously run as a conservative for other municipal positions and has been active in conservative politics.
Last year, he led an ultimately unsuccessful effort to implement a people’s veto to prevent Maine from joining the National Popular Vote Compact, which would assign Maine’s electoral votes based on the national majority rather than the state’s vote.
He is also currently running for a seat on Lebanon’s Select Board.
Little information is available online on Cyr, as she appears to have no campaign website or social media accounts. However, she previously ran for a school board seat in 2022 and lost to current member Nancy Sewell.
MSAD 52
MSAD 52, which serves Greene, Turner, and Leeds, currently has a narrow conservative lead and voted last week to ask its lawyers about the legal ramifications of potentially rescinding its pro-transgender policies.
The conservative majority is currently under threat, as current member Anthony Shostak is up for re-election and is facing a challenge, though no information on his challenger is available online.
Shostak has previously submitted testimony opposing COVID vaccine mandates and in favor of a bill that would have prevented the dissemination of obscene material to minors, even for educational purposes.
The board’s chair, Joseph McLean, is also currently up for re-election.
Richmond School Department
Richmond currently has a conservative majority on its school board, and voted 3-2 last year to require parental involvement in a child’s at-school gender expression.
One of the members who voted in favor of the parental rights-oriented policy change, John Platte, is currently facing a challenge to his seat from a local librarian. If he loses, the board will lose its conservative majority.
Hermon School Department
Hermon currently has a liberal school board majority, and that majority could grow unless conservative member Haily Keezer maintains her seat and conservative candidate Caroline DelMonaco wins the other available seat.
Two seats in Hermon are currently up for grabs: the one Keezer currently holds and the seat of the seemingly conservative James Stubbs, who is not running for re-election.
Keezer has been involved in a recent controversy surrounding her work on the school board. In addition to her work on the board, she serves as one of three nurses who assist a quadriplegic high school student in Hermon and attends school with her on alternating days.
Superintendent Barbara Sargent has said that state law prevents her from helping the disabled student because it prevents school board members or their spouses from working at the school district.
Keezer and the girl’s family have argued that she should be allowed to attend school with the girl since she is paid through a private nursing company hired by the family rather than by the school.
The issue only began when Sargent took over as superintendent in April, and Keezer had previously been allowed to work in the school after being cleared of any suspicion of conflict of interest.
Hermon residents will be asked to select two of four candidates: Delmonaco, Keezer, Jonathan Smith, and Eugene Sullivan Jr.
Sullivan ran against Stubbs and lost in the school board election last year.
RSU 40
Regional School Unit (RSU) 40, serving Friendship, Union, Waldoboro, Warren, and Washington, is facing a potentially significant change, with four school board seats up for re-election.
The board has a slim liberal majority, and if two of the seats flip, the district’s schools could be led by conservatives.
The board narrowly voted in 2024 to repeal their pro-transgender policies, but following an ideological shift after last year’s June election, they voted 9-6 to reinstate the policy.
One moderately conservative member, Randy Kassa, is running unopposed. He previously voted in favor of repealing the transgender policies but has since expressed opposition to seeing the issue come up for another vote.
Julie Swindler, a liberal board member, is facing her first challenger after having run unopposed for two terms. Rick Butler is running to unseat Swindler, and he has made his opposition to the school’s transgender policies abundantly clear.
The liberal board chair, Danny Jackson, is currently up for re-election and is facing opposition from Sonja Sleeper, who previously ran as a Republican for the Maine House of Representatives.
Erik Amundsen, another Liberal, is also at risk of losing his seat to Timothy Wood, who ran for the board in 2022 but lost the election.
In each of these races, turnout will be critical to the outcomes. Next Tuesday, local voters in Androscoggin, Knox, Lincoln, Penobscot and York counties — and elsewhere — will have the chance to have their voices heard about how to improve schools shown on national tests to be struggling. These early races could also be a barometer of what is to come next year.
