6 districts are asking to dismiss the case, arguing the Maine Human Rights Commission erred when it sued them over transgender athlete and bathroom policies. A 7th filed a separate motion, arguing its policies aren’t exclusionary.
Riley Board
Staff Writer
Riley covers education for the Press Herald. Before moving to Portland, she spent two years in Kenai, Alaska, reporting on local government, schools and natural resources for the public radio station KDLL as part of the Report for America program. Riley originally hails from Sarasota, Florida, and is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, where she served as the editor-in-chief of the college’s student newspaper, The Campus. She has interned at the Burlington Free Press, and at the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Magazine in Washington, D.C. Outside of work, Riley is passionate about roller skating, cooking and her cat, Edgar.
More Maine high schoolers are looking to Canada for college
Amid increased political pressures on American higher education, and the rising cost of college, some Maine students are heading across the border.
UNE receives $5M gift for public and environmental health institute
The donation from the founder of IDEXX Laboratories will support the new David Evans Shaw Institute of Public and Planetary Health.
From cellphone bans to the funding formula, major education changes became law
The Legislature passed consequential reforms, including some long-fought changes to school construction funding and making free community college permanent.
Brewer schools, widow of conservative activist reach $350,000 settlement
Patricia McBreairty, the widow of Shawn McBreairty, will receive the payout from the Bangor-area district following a lawsuit filed in 2024.
Legislature passes first reform of Maine’s school funding formula in 2 decades
Gov. Mills plans to sign the bill — which would change the EPS formula by accounting for local poverty rates in state funding calculations and modernizing outdated regional adjustments — into law.
Maine lawmakers make last-minute changes to school funding formula bill
Following concerns over costs, lawmakers on the education committee supported an amended version of the bill. It now goes to the full Legislature.
Supporters object to trans sports referendum ballot language
The secretary of state released draft language this week for how the initiative, which seeks to limit school sports participation and use of bathrooms and similar spaces to a student’s assigned sex at birth, would appear on the November ballot.
A commission spent more than a year studying Maine’s school construction crisis. What now?
An amended bill passed by the education committee incorporates some of the commission’s recommendations, but a $100 million price tag might scare lawmakers.
Statewide bell-to-bell ban on cellphones in schools moves a step closer to reality
The Legislature’s budget committee this week supported funding and language Gov. Janet Mills proposed in her supplemental budget. If the House and Senate follow suit, Maine would join 23 other states with similar policies.