GARDINER — An attempt to censure the chairwoman of the Gardiner-area school board Thursday failed but showed the ongoing tension among board members in this small Kennebec County school district.

Partway through the meeting, Michelle Tucker, one of Gardiner’s five representatives to the Maine School Administrative District 11’s board, sought to publicly reprimand Becky Fles for what Tucker considered a disparaging comment, which would violate the code of ethics school board members agree to abide by.

For months, members of the school board have been at odds over district policies, including allowing a school-based health center to open in the district and civil rights protections for transgender students.

In this instance, Tucker cited a comment Fles made at the Maine School Management Association workshop in October during a session about how to control a school board “when a meeting goes sideways.”

Tucker obtained audio of the remarks and shared it with the school board in an email ahead of the meeting. Tucker was not at the workshop, but someone sent her the audio, she said.

“We have four board members who are there for different reasons than the rest of us,” Fles said in the video clip, adding that there is “one board member in particular who is connected to outside organizations.”

Fles did not mention any school board members names in the audio, which was then turned into a video by Courage is Habit, one of the parents’ rights organizations that has focused its attention on the district.

Tucker said her intention with the censure was not to cause a heated argument, but to bring accountability to the board’s leader. However, others pointed out Tucker has made comments on social media that included board member’s names.

It sparked heated exchanges that resulted in Fles banging the gravel several times and groans from the audience who were frustrated as the arguing on the topic went back and forth for about a half-hour.

“Becky, you used your authority to disparage…” she said, but was unable to finish as Kate Merrill, a West Gardiner representative, held up printed photos of screenshots of Tucker talking about other school board members on social media.

“I haven’t said stuff in quite some time,” Tucker said. “I’ve stopped.”

Joanne O’Brien, a Gardiner representative, said in response, “We are not calling for a censure of you, but maybe we should.”

“Go for it,” Tucker said, which received some audible reactions from the audience.

“The reason I’ve asked to never censure you is because I don’t need to humiliate you,” Fles said. “It is unkind, it’s humiliating and if you ever wanted to speak to me personally, I would happily do that.”

Several school board members disagreed with Tucker and said she brought up the censure to delay regular business at the board meeting.

Tucker also complained that the proposed censure did not appear on the agenda as she intended. She had wanted it to be considered as new business, not as an item that required board votes to be added to the agenda.

“I think what you are doing is making a dilatory motion and it’s made with the purpose of delaying or frustrating the assembly,” Merrill said. “I think you’ve been doing this for a long time. I think you have misused ‘point of order’ as a way of disrupting what is going on. I think for that, this should be stricken from the agenda.”

Fles, who attends the Maine School Management Association every year with vice chairperson Tony Viet, said in a statement to the board Thursday that she wanted to share her experience with other 135 school board members who attended the event.

Only four board members voted in favor of adding the censure procedure to the meeting’s agenda: Tucker; Randolph representatives Daniel Coutts and Barry Manning; and Pittston representative Jeffrey Hanley. Six voted against it: Linda Caputo, of Pittston; Gardiner represenatives Meaghan Carlson, Tony Viet and Joanne O’Brien; West Gardiner representatives Molly Rogers and Kate Merrill. Fles abstained and Janelle McKinnon, of West Gardiner, was absent.

A Kennebec Journal investigation showed that the parents’ rights organizations are intentionally stirring up discord at school board meetings across Maine. The conservative organizations are funded by top far-right megadonors who have said they support the goal reshaping public education to reflect conservative values.