A hearing on a new policy that gives the school administration more oversight of booster club finances brought out some bad blood between the high school cheerleading booster club and members of the Scarborough Board of Education at a school board meeting on Thursday.

About a dozen representatives from high school booster clubs, including swimming, soccer, wrestling and cheerleading, showed up at the meeting to hear the second reading on a new policy that outlines the expectations of booster groups in town.

According to Superintendent David Doyle, the policy is intended to “tighten the relationship between booster clubs and the school department.” Doyle said schools throughout the state are adopting a similar set of guidelines, which were based on a template from the Maine School Management Association.

“We’re revamping all of our co-curricular policies,” Doyle said.

During the public session at the beginning of the meeting, Barbara Silke, a representative of the cheerleading boosters who was granted additional time to speak, made several accusations against the school district regarding the treatment of the cheerleaders, the booster group and the coaches, including Cheryl Hitchcock, who recently resigned from her position.

Silke, the mother of two Scarborough athletes, said she was speaking both as a “concerned parent” and as an officer of the cheering boosters.

During her prepared speech, Silke called the board’s proposed booster group policy “a blatant attempt to micro manage these groups and the funds raised by forcing audits by an independent certified auditor.”

Doyle explained in an interview that the policy’s “initial language did talk about audits,” but due to concern from parents, the policy was reviewed and the language was changed to say that “at the Board’s discretion, booster groups may be required to submit an independent audit.” Originally, the policy called for an annual audit of all booster groups at the club’s expense.

“The board has to be careful when money is being raised in the school department’s name,” Doyle said, but, he said, that would largely be monitored by the group providing financial records quarterly to the school board and an audit would only be required when it seemed as though money was being handled inappropriately.

Silke said the cheerleading boosters had been singled out in the past and treated unfairly. She said the team’s assistant coach “was denied her stipend halfway through the fall season after she had already volunteered her time and committed to our children because of a complaint by the District.” According to Doyle, a second cheerleading coach had been approved by the board to coach the junior varsity team, but there weren’t enough participants to field that team, and so the stipend was not paid.

According to school board member Diane Messer, just a few years ago, the program had over 40 participants and ended this season with about 15.

“You need to ask, why?” Messer said of the decrease in participation, but declined to elaborate because of her position on the board.

“It’s a personnel issue,” Messer said.

Messer and board member Jane Wiseman were identified by Silke as the two board members that, in her speech, she accused of being “unethical, biased, self serving, manipulative members that are working for their own agendas based on personal vendettas.” At the end of her speech, she called for their resignation from the board.

Wiseman and Messer are both involved in Scarborough cheering at the middle school level, which Messer said has put her in “a sticky situation” as a board member. Messer said behavior by the younger members of the high school cheering squad has discouraged many eighth-graders, including her daughter, from continuing to cheer for Scarborough next year when they move up to the next level. Messer said that the older members of the team are working to rectify the situation.

Jackie Fournier, who will be a senior, attended the meeting in support of Silke and the booster club.

“I don’t know what to expect for next year,” Fournier said.

Doyle said the school department can “do something investigating” into the accusations made by Silke, but, he said, the majority of her concerns are “pretty easily answered.”

In the end, both Messer and Silke said their greatest concern was the well-being of the cheerleaders and the continuation of the program.

“It’s time to change direction,” Messer said. She said she hopes the middle school and high school cheering squads will be able to resolve their differences and bond together next year as one team when the eighth graders move up to the varsity level.

“I’m hopeful there will be a resolution,” Silke said in an interview after the meeting. “We’ve all had enough. We just want the girls to cheer.”

The board voted 4-0 to approve the policy on relations with booster groups.