When Elizabeth Lowell heads to the polls this spring, the 41-year-old Warren woman plans to vote for Julie Swindler, an incumbent seeking reelection to the board of Regional School Unit 40.
Lowell supports Swindler for various reasons, including that Swindler supports the Union-based school district’s transgender protections policy that was briefly eliminated last year before the board put it back into place. Swindler also opposed an earlier effort to ban a book called “Gender Queer,” a memoir written by a queer, nonbinary author that other districts across the country have blocked.
Lowell has three children, including a transgender son who recently graduated from the district, and she said its debates over gender issues have been distressing for him.
“When they were pushing for the removal of ‘Gender Queer’ from the library, my son and his friends, they were pretty upset about that,” Lowell said. “Because they knew, being really smart kids, that this was just the first step of trying to push them out of the crowd, trying to erase their presence and hide that they existed and to try to put them back out of sight.”
A decade ago, little attention would have been paid to school board races in many parts of Maine. But RSU 40 has turned into a battleground over some of the hot-button social issues — especially around gender — that emerged during the early days of the COVID pandemic and have taken on new weight since President Donald Trump made them a central part of his new administration.
In 2022, its board spent many hours debating the proposed ban of “Gender Queer” at the Medomak Valley High School library before ultimately rejecting it. Last year, it voted to repeal the district’s transgender protection policy, which had allowed students to use restrooms that matched their gender identity, use their chosen names and pronouns, and other things that are consistent with Maine’s anti-discrimination laws, but which were opposed by conservative activists. Then, the board reinstated the policy after an election narrowly flipped the ideological makeup of its members.
Now, voters will again have a chance to change the makeup of the board, which has four seats up for election in June. That could influence whether it again takes up any proposals to cut the rights of transgender students, and it’s generating a lot more interest among both candidates and voters.
Already this year, at least two other Maine school districts have gone in that direction. After the Trump administration sued the state over policies allowing transgender girls and women to compete in school sports, the Hodgdon school board in April adopted the administration’s language that only recognizes two sexes — potentially laying the groundwork for further changes. And earlier this month, the Gouldsboro-area school board rescinded its transgender policy.
RSU 40 includes the towns of Friendship, Union, Waldoboro, Warren and Washington, which are all rural, right-leaning communities that voted for Trump in the last three elections.
But the district isn’t uniformly conservative. It is bordered by several blue communities along the midcoast. And in one example of its political moderation, some of its towns recently supported the reelection of independent U.S. Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats, even as they also supported Trump.
Now, candidates for the school board are acting like the stakes are higher in this election.
Swindler, the incumbent who is being challenged by Rick Butler for a seat representing Warren, has already served two terms on the board, but she said this is the first time she’s had an opponent in the race. Now, she’s campaigning with signs and a Facebook page.
“My first term, nobody was interested in running,” Swindler said. “I filled in because there was an opportunity to help. And nobody was running. I had people write me in — my friends — and I’m on the board.”
Her opponent, Butler, did not respond to a request for comment. But he has advocated banning “Gender Queer” from schools. Lowell opposes that position of his. She also disagrees with him on a different kind of substantive issue: His push to decrease the number of credits required to graduate high school from 22 to 11.
Butler said in a Facebook post that he would like to lower the credit requirement in order to allow students to get an associate’s degree during their time in high school. But Lowell worried that simply decreasing the credits wouldn’t adequately prepare students who don’t want to earn an associate’s degree in high school for the future.
“They’re going to have half of their education missing, and then when it is time for them to go to college, I think they’re going to struggle,” Lowell said.
Danny Jackson, the chair of the district’s board who represents Waldoboro, has served on the panel for 19 years and never had an opponent before 2022, he said. He believes that political issues such as the transgender policy and book banning have gotten more voters engaged in the race.
Jackson voted against repealing the district’s transgender protections last year, and like Swindler, he said he intends to follow the Maine Human Rights Act if reelected. But if the makeup of the board flips again, he worries there could be new proposals for removing those protections or banning books.
Jackson is running against Sonja Sleeper, who could not be reached for comment.
A third candidate for the board, Randy Kassa, is running unopposed for another seat in Warren, and he too thinks that more people are dialed into the school board race because they can have more power with their vote in local elections.
“Perhaps it’s because there may be people who don’t think that their vote makes a big deal or a big impact at the state, or at the federal, or at the county level,” Kassa said. “But education is a place where you can make a local impact with your vote.”
But Kassa, who voted last year to repeal the district’s transgender policy, said that he doesn’t see any more changes being made to the policy anytime soon and that he intends to “let it be” since Trump is now in office.
Some more conservative-leaning voters in the district are also less concerned about the social issues that have recently drawn so much attention to the school board. They instead pointed to a part of school administration that has more traditionally energized voters: the financial burden it puts on local taxpayers.
One voter, 61-year-old Scott Bramhall of Friendship, said he’s most concerned that increases in the school budget could continue to push up his property taxes. He also said he sides more with the Trump administration than with Gov. Janet Mills on the question of rights for transgender students, although he noted it’s “kind of a hard area for me to want to deal with.”
“I suppose everybody has their own position in life, what they want to do, when they want to do it,” Bramhall said. “But I’m with the president on that. I’m not with the governor by any means.”
Despite those views, Bramhall said he supports the candidacy of Jackson, who he thinks has done a good job on the board.
There are other residents who have opinions on school district policy, but don’t even plan on voting, such as TJ Benner, 47, of Warren.
Benner said the district’s budget is “out of control,” and that its schools should “teach reading, writing and math instead of worrying what gender the students are.” He said that he doesn’t want kids to be picked on, but he doesn’t think transgender girls should compete in girls’ sports.
Benner’s son graduated from Medomak Valley High School last spring. But despite his passion regarding the increasing budget and transgender students, he doesn’t plan to vote in this year’s election.
“Normally I do vote, but I don’t know what else is going to be on the ballot,” Benner said.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.