Recently, Gorham parent Kelli Deveaux wrote a Community Voices commentary for the Portland Press Herald, in which she alleged that outside interests are behind the recent unprecedented number of Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) requests that the Gorham School Department has received, contributing to huge, unanticipated increases to the school budget. She used such words as “witch hunt” “fear campaign” and “politicized firestorm” in her PPH column and went on to connect the FOAA requests to other recent events, such as allegations that some individuals had been making on certain private social media sites. She charged that these sites have been spreading false and defamatory allegations against school department employees and town officials, in an effort to eliminate certain school policies on diversity, health and sexuality education, and gender identity.
Gorham Times staff contacted Deveaux to seek further comment, and also contacted Amanda Cooper, a Gorham Middle School teacher who is the head of the Gorham Education Association.
Deveaux confirmed what she said in the Press Herald commentary, then went on to provide even more details about the negative social media campaign and explained why she thought these attacks are being directed against certain school employees and officials. She also confirmed that the district’s additional $150,000 to $160,000 of legal fees and staffing costs for 2022 are almost entirely caused by the few people behind all the allegations.
As in the Community Voices column, Deveaux stated that it all appears related to a small number of individuals who are opposed to Gorham Schools having a strong policy of providing a safe and welcoming space for all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Deveaux believes that these individuals have resorted to placing falsified or “rigged” screenshots targeting health teachers, librarians, and administrators on certain websites because efforts to force Gorham Schools to change their policies have been unsuccessful. She believes that these individuals have a goal of undermining confidence in Gorham’s teachers. She commented that in this process “they could destroy careers”, by creating “a culture of conspiracy.” They, in turn, believe that their values are under attack.
Deveaux concluded by saying that students at Gorham High School are increasingly becoming aware of the controversies, and some have been able to access websites containing the extreme allegations. She believes most students who learn about the allegations find the entire situation very troubling.
Amanda Cooper said that the FOAA requests and social media attacks have come from “a small group of people who are deeply upset with certain things about public education.” She added “in Gorham, we’ve been hit pretty hard by FOAA requests”.
She said the specific wording of the questions in the FOAA requests is “intended to defame and demoralize public school employees. It may be about an effort to create fear and doubt about public education and public school employees. I believe what we are facing is a deliberate effort to create wedge issues.”
She added that teachers believe that “their job is to support students in becoming their best selves,” and that students who have been marginalized need help from teachers “to make them feel welcome.” She said that the FOAA requests are “basically coming from three people, and [to a lesser degree] from a few of their friends. There is nothing to hide, but the requestors are insinuating that we’re hiding something.”
Cooper continued, “This is hitting pretty hard at teachers who are just doing their jobs by teaching health or history, by calling health teachers ‘creepy groomers.’” Referring to social media, she said, “we are being accused of indoctrination and ‘grooming.’” She specified that “grooming” appears to mean “grooming or convincing them [students] to adopt certain gender identities.” She mentioned that the requests often seem to focus on how educators respond when students ask to use a different name or set of pronouns.
Cooper went on to say that besides targeting health educators and librarians for allegedly promoting inappropriate sexuality and gender identity teaching, the lists of requested materials also include materials pertaining to diversity education for students and diversity training for teachers. She said, “Maine is a pretty ‘white’ state, and we need that,” referring to diversity education. “We are becoming more diverse. We need to do what we can to support our changing groups of students. Tons of historical data support what we’re doing.”
“My job is to support students to become critical thinkers, but I believe public schools should be nonpolitical.” She said that just after the 2020 election, she was recorded on audio by a student who said he was going to get her fired for political indoctrination. She said she learned that certain websites have pushed parents to encourage students to record their teachers because of alleged political indoctrination in the classroom. She added that teaching civics requires her to encourage students to discuss elections in class, while not promoting any partisan viewpoints.
She also said that false allegations against a Gorham teacher were recently featured on a national right-wing website.
She worries that all the additional stress will cause teachers to retire in excessive numbers and that today’s college students will choose not to become teachers.
Cooper closed by saying “I firmly believe in what educators are doing to help students be their best selves, to be good people”.
The Gorham School Department has recently posted all the requests for information under the FOAA law for the calendar year 2022 and has also included the number of hours that staff spent fulfilling the requests. The webpage can be accessed through this link.
It appears there were 38 FOAA requests in 2022. All but two appeared to be from individuals pursuing the types of allegations described above by Kelli Deveaux and Amanda Cooper. The other two were from a Westbrook newspaper reporter researching a related story.