Three parents are running for three open seats on the Bangor School Committee, meaning all will automatically win a seat.
We asked them about their plans for the role and their stances on the big decisions facing Bangor’s school department, including how the district may reorganize in the face of aging facilities.
All three agreed that it’s not financially feasible to continue maintaining 10 schools, but there were differences in their proposed solutions.
The uncontested election contrasts with the 12-candidate City Council race, which is the largest pool in at least four decades.
Only one School Committee candidate, Katie Brydon, is running for reelection, while current chair Timothy Surrette and member Shelly Okere are stepping down. Surrette is term-limited.
Election Day is Nov. 3 and voters can request an absentee ballot through Oct. 29.
School Committee candidates are listed below in the order they appear on the ballot.
Jamie Beck
Jamie Beck, 40, grew up in Bangor and returned 11 years ago. She works as a lecturer and graduate assistant at the University of Maine while she’s pursuing a master’s degree in business administration, and previously worked as a speech language pathologist in public schools.
Beck, a Democrat, has three children in Bangor schools and said she volunteers regularly with her children’s schools and the parent teacher organization. She decided to run for School Committee after one of her children was affected by the relocation of Fairmount School this year into a wing of the high school due to asbestos and other repair needs.
She said her top priority would be to implement strong communication from the school department as it works through the upcoming decisions regarding facilities and possible school consolidation.
“Fear bubbles up in a vacuum,” she said. “I can be a voice for frequent, clear, honest and complete communication between everyone involved.”
Beck said she’d like to encourage schools to expand nature-based learning programs, and to work on leveling the playing field for students by examining disparities in outcomes, test scores and student experiences between schools.
“I would love to see how we can, in all of the strategic planning conversations, ensure that all of our students have what they need so that we do have much more consistent outcomes,” she said.
She noted that while Bangor’s neighborhood schools are really important for younger students, she thinks the district is “doing them a disservice” by waiting until high school to combine students from the east and west sides of the city. She’d like to see schools consolidate at the middle school level, and then later at the upper elementary level while maintaining neighborhood schools for the youngest students.
At the outset of the election, it was unclear whether Beck would be able to be sworn in because her husband, Michael Beck, is a city councilor. The city later clarified that she would be allowed to serve due to new evidence establishing that the School Committee is excluded from a nepotism rule barring immediate family members of councilors from serving on council-appointed boards.
Katie Brydon
Brydon, 42, grew up in the Bangor area and has lived in the city since 2013. She has three children in Bangor schools and is the executive director of Nature Links, a Blue Hill-based nonprofit that teaches adults with disabilities. Her previous experience includes working in schools and writing disability education policy.
Brydon is a Democrat and the only candidate who has already served on the School Board after being elected in 2023. She said her three years on the committee have given her a better understanding of the major gaps in the school system, like aging infrastructure, behavioral challenges driven by factors ranging from technology to the opioid epidemic to COVID-19, and more support for teachers.
She said her top priority would be to address Bangor’s aging school facilities by balancing what the city can afford with the ethos of the school district and the community, making the upcoming changes “as palatable and thoughtful and inclusive of this vibrant community as possible.”
For Brydon, that means avoiding the elimination of neighborhood schools — a message she heard loud and clear in the backlash to the department’s quick response to facilities issues at Fairmount last year. At the same time, she said that she sees reducing the number of schools in the district as the fiscally responsible choice.
“Having 10 schools across 3,400 students no longer makes sense,” she said.
Similarly to Beck, Brydon also added that consolidating students before they reach high school could also help ensure that their experiences are more similar, acknowledging that many residents see disparities between schools on the east and west sides.
“What I want to continue to do is to challenge every student to reach their full potential,” she said.
Brydon ran for state legislature this spring with the goal of advocating for better school funding at the state level. She lost her primary but said she still sees working more closely with state legislators as an important tool for securing more funding and support for Bangor’s teachers.
Emily Tilton
Emily Tilton, 37, grew up in Bangor and moved back to the city after attending college and post-graduate training to be a pharmacist. She said she’s always enjoyed serving children, both in her job working in pediatrics and during a several-month stint in her last year of pharmacy school when she worked as a substitute teacher in Bangor and Brewer.
She has two children in Bangor schools and volunteers as a coach for her daughter’s soccer team in the city’s parks and recreation department.
Tilton, a Republican, said she decided to run for School Committee after seeing how technology was being used in her son’s classroom. Her top priority is to ensure that all technology use in the school department is evaluated for learning outcomes, effects on students and whether it aligns with data-driven best practices. She said she’d like to see a full audit of technology use in the district.
“I think that really, technology should be used for its true intent, which is as a tool, and I do not think that technology should be used as a form of teaching or a form of learning,” Tilton said, pointing to the risk of harms associated with constant distractions and lost opportunities to build communication skills. She’d especially like to minimize technology use between pre-k and fifth grade and implement rules around artificial intelligence use.
Tilton also said she wants to “bring back the conversation of academic achievement” that she experienced as a student in Bangor schools by encouraging more public discussion and support around programs that drive academic excellence.
“It’s not going to look the same for every student, but every student is capable of achieving,” she said.
She also thinks there are opportunities for parents to help support Bangor teachers more, such as by volunteering and running storytimes in classrooms.
On the issue of aging facilities, Tilton said she’d like to preserve the feeling of neighborhood schools, which are “really woven into the fabric of our community” and offer benefits like walkability, smaller class sizes and close relationships with school administrators, while also being mindful of the tax burden imposed by expensive school repairs.
She said she wouldn’t support consolidation into large citywide schools and wants to keep schools to 400 students or fewer, but suggested a middle ground like expanding the neighborhood schools to include fourth graders and moving fifth graders up to the district’s middle schools.