AUGUSTA, Maine — Amid a culture war here in Maine and across the country, it's been widely debated about how to talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation in schools.
These issues are bringing school boards and their members into the spotlight — even leading to the removal of members from boards. Now, lawmakers in Augusta are debating bills to offer some protection.
Maine has recently had a few recall elections.
In January, two school board members in the Oxford Hills School District were recalled after backing a policy supporting students' gender expression at school.
Before that, Kennebunk also held a recall election of its own.
"It caused a lot of damage in the community," Representative Daniel Sayre, D-Kennebunk, said. "I think it is a mistake to use recall as a way to reverse individual policies. That’s what elections are for."
Representative Sayre is proposing a bill setting a high bar for the kinds of misdeeds justifying a recall election, such as misuse of public funds.
"Every recall undoes an election so they shouldn’t be taken lightly," Sayre added.
The bill would also require 25 percent of voters in the municipality to sign a petition to recall the member from the school board. The recall would also have to be approved by a majority of voters in an election in which the total vote is at least 30 percent of the number of votes cast.
Another bill is being proposed by Representative Barbara Bagshaw, R-Windham, which would allow a recall election for any reason.
"Not all municipalities have a recall process," Representative Bagshaw explained as her motivation for the bill. "It’s all about fairness."
Some have criticized the bill as too broad and fear it could lead to board members being targeted for personal reasons.
"This is not about targeting sexual preference people or skin color people," Bagshaw said. "This is about ethics."
Bagshaw said she is working across the aisle to make her bill "less broad."