WATERVILLE — School board members voted Monday to remove the name of former Sen. George J. Mitchell from a Waterville elementary school.

Mitchell, 92, appears hundreds of times in files released by the U.S. Department of Justice related to the financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Waterville Public Schools’ policy committee cited the friendship between the two as one of the primary reasons for removing Mitchell’s name from the elementary school.

While Mitchell, a Waterville native, has not been directly linked to child sex abuse and has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal actions, Superintendent Peter Hallen said the board needed only to consider the reputational cost of Mitchell’s name remaining on the building, per district policy.

“(The policy committee feels) the threshold has been met to consider changing the name,” Hallen said. “We’re not going to have an answer to any criminal charges because there haven’t been any filed.”

The school was renamed in 1995, the year Mitchell left the U.S. Senate, from Brookside Elementary School to George J. Mitchell School. The board reversed that change Monday, choosing to return to its original name.

The Waterville Board of Education took up Monday‘s vote in response to the district’s policy committee’s unanimous recommendation for renaming the school.

Parents and teachers had pushed for the change in light of the revelatory Epstein files and the removal of Mitchell’s name from a university building in Northern Ireland, where he helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 as a special envoy from the United States. The agreement effectively ended decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland.

Mitchell’s portrait has also been removed from the Maine State House‘s Hall of Flags. Legislative leaders decided to replace it with one of Gail Laughlin, the first woman to practice law in Maine.

Mitchell also resigned as the honorary chair of the Mitchell Institute last month. The nonprofit, which helps low-income Mainers pursue a college education, also said it is considering removing Mitchell’s name from the organization.

Ward 1 board member Patricia Helm said she was unsure of the necessity of removing Mitchell’s name from the school.

Helm said she had used ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, to collect documents proving an association between Mitchell and Epstein. What the chatbot returned, she said, were six “very innocent, personal relationship kind of emails.” She said she worried removing Mitchell’s name was a “rush to judgment.”

In reality, Mitchell appears more than 300 times in Epstein files released this year by the U.S. Department of Justice. Mitchell continued correspondence with Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution, and an account from Epstein’s house manager shows that Mitchell often appeared at Epstein’s Florida home.

Helm and Ward 6 member Joseph Schmalzel voted against renaming the school. The measure passed, 5-2.

A spokesperson for Mitchell said Tuesday that Mitchell denies “any knowledge of Epstein engaging in illegal or inappropriate conduct with minors” and that he “learned of Epstein’s criminal activity only through media reports related to Epstein’s Florida prosecution.”

“Sen. Mitchell reiterates unequivocally that he never met, spoke with, or had any contact of any kind with any minors,” the spokesperson said. “Sen. Mitchell profoundly regrets his association with Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women.”