Regional School Unit 73 Director Roger Moulton, left, of Livermore Falls speaks at the March 13 board meeting in Jay, where he cited teachers union contracts as an issue in the arrest of an art teacher charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. Seated at right is Director Andrew Sylvester of Livermore. Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

JAY — Two Spruce Mountain High School teachers spoke to Regional School Unit 73 directors March 27, defending staff against comments that union contracts were somehow to blame for an art teacher’s arrest on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor.

On March 8, art teacher Jan Barlow was arrested and charged with sexual exploitation of minor and trying to have the victim destroy evidence. He resigned March 11.

At the March 13 board meeting school officials, the police chief, parents and a student spoke, saying more needs to be done to protect students.

Director Roger Moulton of Livermore Falls said then that changes were needed and cited union contracts as the issue. He noted 98% of district teachers are fantastic, but he proposed year-end student exit surveys to identify those who should be reviewed and possibly terminated.

Michelle Brann, president of Spruce Mountain Education Association, said, “I love working with my students. I take their well-being seriously. I know that every one of my students is also someone else’s very precious child.”

The messages shared at the last board meeting were hard to hear, she said. “Just like everyone who works here, I was devastated to learn that one of our students had been preyed upon by another staff member. I know that when a child is harmed, it’s natural for the community to want to have crystal clear understanding of who’s at fault in order to better protect their children moving forward.”

What Brann didn’t expect was learning district leadership and members of the community felt the teachers union was to blame, she said. She thought it important to rebut that message and reaffirm blame lies solely with the predator – who had never been a member of the association. Members are dedicated to students’ education and well-being and would never help protect a predator, she said.

Only administrators can evaluate teachers, Brann said. There is a clearly outlined publicly available teacher evaluation system for identifying problems and only the board of directors has the power to hire and fire teaching staff, she said.

“I want to emphasize that while our relationship with the board has been healthy and collaborative for the last several years, it was so incredibly demoralizing to realize last week that district leadership is so willing to let the community believe that we are somehow at fault for what has happened here,” Brann said. It’s plain who should be blamed, not the dedicated teachers in the Spruce Mountain Education Association, she added.

Staff ‘not the enemy’

Nicole Curtis has been teaching in the district seven years, coached three sports teams, served on numerous committees and was adviser for the Class of 2022 and will be for the Class of 2026.

“I have proudly watched close to 1,000 students march across six different graduate stages,” she said.

“I have also lost a number of students to forces outside of our control, the most recently last fall, which causes a different kind of pain that I will have to live with for the rest of my life,” she stated.

Curtis said her students mean the world to her, she worries about them, celebrates their successes and mourns their losses.

Staff have taken a punch to the gut, Curtis said. “We have been labeled as part of, if not the problem itself,” she exclaimed through tears. “Social media, the harsh comments lumping us all into the image of this horrible monster who don’t value the safety of children has gutted teachers like me, whose purpose here is to protect those kids. We’ve been serving that purpose since day one.”

Curtis encouraged the community to not forget all the hard work and dedication teachers have poured into children. “Remember that there are so many staff members like me who are not the enemy,” she added.

‘The bottom 2%’

Moulton responded that he was embarrassed to be at the meeting.

“The community comes up here and nobody recommended one thing that might prevent this in the future,” he said. “Everyone’s offended at what I said the last time I was here. This is my opinion, not that of the board. I said 98% of our teachers are absolutely fantastic. If you think you fall in the bottom 2% do yourself a favor and go away now. Why would you be here if you feel like you’re in the bottom 2% of our educators?”

Moulton said he will continue with the survey. “We don’t have a threshold for these surveys,” he said. “My recommendation is that the bottom 1% of the surveys comes to the school board where they can be fired at will.”

In mentioning the surveys, he stressed he wasn’t blaming the MEA or teachers’ union. “Wording in the contract does make it difficult to terminate a teacher,” he said. “The student surveys would give us an opportunity to get rid of the 2% of bad eggs. If you care about the students and you’re part of the 98% you want the 2% gone. I think if we had these surveys in place, the monster would have had several bad surveys in the last 15 years. That’s why I recommended it.”

Moulton said he was trying to be proactive, nobody else wants to be. “We just want to twiddle our thumbs and let this happen again and change the language on how we handle it,” he said. “That is absolutely ridiculous.”