SKOWHEGAN — The Maine School Administrative District 54 board of directors could soon weigh in on where it stands in the clash between the Trump administration and Maine officials over the state’s policy for transgender student-athlete participation in sports.

Wayne Wofford, recently appointed to the Maine School Administrative District 54 board of directors, said Thursday he’s concerned that federal funding for the district could be jeopardized if its policies don’t follow a presidential directive to bar transgender student-athletes assigned male at birth from competing on girls’ teams. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel file

A member of the Skowhegan-area district’s board, Wayne Wofford of Cornville, tried at the meeting Thursday night to make a motion for a vote on whether the district should explicitly follow the executive orders of President Donald J. Trump.

Wofford, who was appointed to the board of directors in January to fill a vacancy, said the district currently has no student-athlete in particular that may violate Title IX or Trump’s order intended to bar transgender student-athletes assigned male at birth from competing on girls’ teams. He said he was concerned, though, that the district’s funding could be put in jeopardy.

But the board’s chair, Lynda Quinn of Skowhegan, refused to let the board consider Wofford’s motion before anyone could second it to send it to a vote.

“This is not an appropriate place for a motion,” she told Wofford, who had interjected during the report of Superintendent of Schools Jonathan Moody.

Wofford, a former critic of COVID-19 mask mandates who later faced charges for trying to attend meetings in violation of a police order that barred him from MSAD 54 property, said he is still learning how board meetings run.

Lynda Quinn. Morning Sentinel file photo

“That’s right. You don’t understand,” Quinn responded. She then said the issue would be added to the agenda of the next regularly scheduled board meeting March 20, so it could be discussed before a vote.

Later in the meeting, board member Michael Lambke of Skowhegan asked whether the issue would need to go through the board’s policy committee first.

“The way it stands now, it would come here,” to the full board, Quinn said. “I would prefer it be done in committee because I think it’s easier to start that conversation there before we bring it here. But we’ll see how it goes.”

MSAD 54 serves Canaan, Cornville, Mercer, Norridgewock, Smithfield and Skowhegan and is governed by a 23-member elected board of directors.

The issue of school districts’ compliance with Title IX — a civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at schools that receive federal funding — has come to the forefront in Maine in recent weeks.

In February, Trump signed an executive order, called “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which was aimed at barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

A few weeks later, Maine Gov. Janet Mills publicly sparred with Trump over his threats to cut funding to Maine in an exchange that circulated widely in the news media and on social media. Shortly after, the U.S. Department of Education said it would launch an investigation into the Maine Department of Education and MSAD 51, based in Cumberland.

The day before the clash between Mills and Trump, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also launched its own compliance review of Maine’s education department.

That federal department’s Office of Civil Rights found the Maine DOE was violating Title IX with its transgender student-athlete policy and referred the case to the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a Feb. 25 decision made public this week.

MSAD 54 Superintendent Jon Moody says the school district currently complies with federal guidelines, as the district has not updated its Title IX regulations yet because of cases making their way through the courts. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel file

The Maine Principals’ Association, which oversees high school sports in Maine, allows transgender student athletes to compete either on the team that aligns with their sex assigned at birth or the one aligned with their gender identity. That policy is meant to align with state law under the Maine Human Rights Act.

Moody, MSAD 54’s superintendent, said Thursday in response to comments from members of the public that the district follows current federal rules.

“I think we’re very much in the clear, as far as following all of the federal guidelines,” Moody told the board. “We didn’t update our Title IX regs actually when they came out a few years ago. We chose to wait because there were some court battles that were happening with that.”

Moody and Assistant Superintendent Mark Hatch told the board the district has no policy about athletics that mentions gender identity. The district does, however, include “gender identity” in policies about harassment and discrimination to comply with the Maine Human Rights Act.

Moody said he would review the policies and seek the opinion of the school district’s attorneys regarding the implication of Wofford’s proposed vote.

As for potential loss of federal funding — whether due to the Trump administration’s scrutiny of the Maine DOE or threatened freezes of federal grants and spending — Moody said the outlook is unclear. Superintendents of Maine’s school districts met with state Education Commissioner Pender Makin this week, he said.

“What we learned from that, I think, is that we essentially don’t know,” Moody told the board. “That’s my summation. We don’t know. We know, legally, if Congress has appropriated money, the monies are to come to the state. Because the executive branch is responsible for executing, we don’t know what that’s going to look like.”

Thursday’s discussion was sparked, in part, by comments from former board member Julian Payne of Cornville during the public participation portion at the beginning of the meeting.

Payne, who resigned from the board in December but has since made comments at several board meetings, said he was shocked by what he called the board’s inaction in response to Trump’s orders.

“The school board is between a rock and a hard place regarding federal executive orders and the Maine Department of Education,” Payne said, reading prepared remarks. “The Supremacy Clause (in the Constitution of the United States) establishes federal law over conflicting state law. Board members can be held personally liable for their inactions by federal courts. … You are in violation of Title IX, and this will harm every child and teacher with the loss of federal funds. Trump said he will not tolerate noncompliance.”

State legislators representing some towns MSAD 54 serves also urged district officials to take steps to comply with the Trump administration to avoid losing federal funds, according to a letter dated Feb. 20.

The letter, signed by Rep. Jennifer Poirier, R-Skowhegan; Rep. John “Jack” Ducharme, R-Madison; and Sen. Bradlee Farrin, R-Norridgewock, and addressed to Moody, was not discussed at Thursday’s meeting. Poirier, a former MSAD 54 board member, shared it with the Morning Sentinel on Friday, upon request.

In the letter, the three legislators said they believe several of Trump’s executive orders “appear to conflict with conventional practices and policies across our state, including in MSAD #54” and urged the district to take action to ensure compliance with the orders.

The letter references one in particular that threatens, among other things, to pull federal funding from schools that discriminate on the basis of “gender ideology” and “equity ideology.”

“Regardless of personal opinions on these and other executive orders, we believe President Trump has demonstrated his willingness to cut federal funding for noncompliance,” the letter reads. “Until these orders are rescinded or overturned, compliance remains crucial.”