Posted on May 28, 2021

Maine School Board Bars Anti-CRT Parent from Attending Daughter’s Graduation

Chrissy Clark, Daily Wire, May 25, 2021

A father from an affluent town in Maine is barred from attending his daughter’s graduation ceremony after publicly criticizing the local school board.

On May 15, police handed father Shawn McBreairty a “prohibitive conduct warning” informing him that he is no longer allowed on local school district property. McBreairty needs clearance from the district’s superintendent to attend on-campus events. Violation of this order could result in arrest.

McBreairty told The Daily Wire that the conduct warning was served because of his ongoing fight with Cumberland’s Maine School Administrative District 51 (MSAD51) school board, which began in June 2020. MSAD 51’s Superintendent Jeff Porter claims that McBreairty was served with a warning for “padlocking a huge wooden-backed billboard to a school fence without permission.”

Following the death of George Floyd, Porter and the district’s “Equity Leadership Committee” emailed out an equity statement. McBreairty — who described himself as publicly apolitical prior to his school board fight — said that he found the email incredibly divisive and partisan.

“In a culture that continually reinforces white supremacy, justice can only be achieved when we confront and repair the anti-Blackness woven through every aspect of society — in our homes, schools, workplaces, communities, places of worship, and government,” the email reads.

{snip} Following complaints, the superintendent emailed parents encouraging them to stay open-minded to the partisan teaching.

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In the same email, Porter announced that the school district had hired Boston-based Community Change Inc., a diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting firm. The firm holds far-left views and advocates for the destruction of capitalism. {snip}

McBreairty told The Daily Wire that by September he had become an active parent at school board meetings and was advocating for increased transparency in the curriculum. The father of two said that he knew what critical race theory was and became fearful that Community Change Inc. would promote the divisive theory in the classroom.

McBreairty claims that the school board’s equity lead, Ann Maksymowicz, tried to silence him and others for opposing critical race theory. At one meeting, a community member used a three-minute comment period to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Maksymowicz refused to stand for the Pledge and McBreairty snapped a picture.

The father posted the picture on Facebook and Twitter. On October 19, McBreairty printed the picture onto a small canvas and placed it on his lawn with a floodlight. {snip}

Maksymowicz claimed that the picture was no longer a form of free speech, but a form of harassment. The school board member came up to McBreairty’s door and asked his wife to remove the sign. Instead, he opted to get an even bigger sign.

{snip}

{snip} By January 2021, McBreairty removed the sign of Maksymowicz and focused his efforts on filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to reveal the scope of critical race theory in MSAD51 schools.

{snip}