Michelle Tucker, left, a candidate for the Gardiner-area school board, is seen in a security camera still image on Sept. 5 after a board meeting. The video shows her waiting outside, then approaching two students, who she then stops to speak  about comments they made regarding transgender policy. Courtesy of MSAD 11

GARDINER — A woman running for a seat on the Maine School Administrative District 11 board of directors confronted a student representative last month after the student spoke candidly at a board meeting about having a transgender relative.

Michelle Tucker attended the Sept. 5 meeting, then confronted the student outside, according to a police report filed by the school resource officer through the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office and surveillance video of the incident. No charges were filed.

Tucker is running for Gardiner’s seat on the MSAD 11 school board in the Nov. 5 election, when she’ll face Marc Cone, Cullen McGough and Nathan Mitchell. She has not run for office before.

Superintendent Pat Hopkins publicly shared the information about the incident with the board at an Oct. 2 business meeting, though she did not name the woman.

However, Tucker, who was in attendance at the Oct. 2 meeting, went up to the board members once the meeting was over and said it was her who spoke to the students outside after the September meeting.

“Just so you all know, I was the one outside, but I’m sure you know that from the (surveillance) video and I did not wait for those students (outside),” Tucker said.

The incident occurred after the Sept. 5 board meeting, where the issue of transgender students using the bathroom of the gender they align with was the topic of conversation during the public comment period. At that time, Tucker spoke out against the transgender student policy. 

MSAD 11 has spent months on the issue of the transgender student policy and the use of school bathrooms. The school district accommodated those uncomfortable with the policy by installing four single-stall bathrooms, but continues to face push back from community members who speak publicly at school board meetings. Members of the public have sent dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests to administration on the topic, asking for clarity and correspondences related to the policy.

MSAD 11 has two student representatives who vote on board issues and offer a student’s perspective on issues as well as a monthly report to the board.

Student representative Sage Sculli told the adult board members that they need to look out for students’ mental health and do what is in their best interest. She spoke, through tears, about her transgender family member who she supported for two years before they came out.

According to the police report, the two student representatives on the board — Kiera Blodgett and Sculli — waited until half an hour after the meeting ended to walk to their vehicles. That’s when they were approached by Tucker.

Surveillance video shows Tucker speaking with the two students for just over a minute before they left.

Tucker told Blodgett she had talked to her boyfriend at the meeting. She told Sculli “to keep it together,” saying that the student came off as unprofessional for sharing a personal story.

Tucker also allegedly told both the student representatives to support her school board campaign.

“Both students were disturbed but the encounter made them both feel very uncomfortable,” the police report said. “One student informed that her boyfriend was also pulled aside by Tucker while he was leaving the meeting.”

Several day after Hopkins reported the incident to the board at the Oct. 2 meeting, Tucker wrote on Facebook that she was “attacked as a candidate” by Fles, the school board chair. In the meeting recording, Fles only tells Tucker it’s not appropriate to speak about the matter at this time as Tucker is already on her way out of the meeting.

In the same Facebook post, Tucker is asking people to send money to her school board campaign because “what is happening in my town is coming to your town,” likely referring to the transgender policy, which the school district is required by state law under the Maine Human Rights Act and under Title IX to enforce. In her candidate profile interview with the Kennebec Journal, she said the transgender policy encouraged her to run for the seat.

Tucker said she was not waiting outside the Sept. 5 meeting for the students; she was waiting for board member Sean Focht to get out of executive session because he was unable to drive after having surgery.

She went up to the students because she was impressed that Blodgett abstained from voting on the transgender policy, which Tucker says shows maturity because Blodgett admitted she did not know all of the facts before voting. Tucker said Blodgett’s boyfriend went up to her at a previous meeting and shared his thoughts about the transgender policy, which Tucker said encouraged her to run.

Tucker believes she has the right to go up to the two girls because they are “public figures” as board members, acting as adults in that capacity.

“(Sculli) did bravely share a story close to her heart, as did members of the public during the public comment portion of the meeting. She cried. Her right to share is valid and it was brave,” Tucker said. Professionalism would have dictated that she excuse herself while she got her emotions under control. Instead, she was allowed, and even encouraged by the adults on the board, to maintain that heightened emotional state during a majority of the meeting. This does not serve the students on how to navigate life in the real world.”

Tucker said that she spoke to them in the way she would speak to her daughter’s friends and that she did not threaten the students.

“A board member asked the superintendent if a restraining order was appropriate, and (Hopkins) dialed back her rhetoric to say, ‘There were no threats,'” Tucker said. “There was audio of my conversation with the young ladies. She has stirred the pot just enough to invite false outrage but she couldn’t go any further without lying.”

Board members at the Oct. 5 meeting expressed outrage at the incident and offered to chaperone the girls to their cars after meetings if necessary.

Diane Potter, who is in her last month on the board, said she saw how upset Sculli was and that she is proud of her speaking up at the September meeting.

Matthew Lillibridge, a representative from West Gardiner, used an expletive in describing his frustration with the encounter,

“And if you have to be escorted out, that’s fine,” Lillibridge said.