PARIS – An Oxford man speaking at Maine School Administrative District 17’s business meeting Monday threatened to out district employees he claimed made vile comments on social media about people losing their lives.
“I will start posting teachers’ names and their comments online about being vile, violent, just disgusting human beings,” Jason Brine said during public comment. “I’ll make sure all the parents see it. Or, we can get to the bottom of it and get rid of these teachers that are vile.”
Brine said he was prepared to print banners with the posters’ names and their comments in prominent public parking lots near Oxford Hills Middle School’s south campus in Oxford and SAD 17’s administrative offices on Main Street in Paris.
Publicly posting private information about others is known as doxing.
Brine was a frequent attendee of SAD 17 board meetings during the pandemic. He used his health battle, which was not related to COVID, to demonstrate the consequences words may have on children and others.
“I went into the hospital after my last conversation here,” he said. “I wonder how many teachers (would) laugh at me and be happy if I died. Let’s fix that problem, real quick.”
He said as a graduate of Oxford Hills it was possible some who would make light of his illness and hypothetical death could have been his own teachers.
“That’s telling me about some of the teachers in this district,” he said. “If a student graduates and some of those teachers have a different point of view — if he gets killed, they’re going to laugh about it? Show me one person that thinks that’s OK. Anybody think that’s OK?”
In an interview Thursday, Brine said his anger stems from the idea that a school teacher would celebrate someone’s death.
“You need to be apolitical,” he said. “We all have differences of opinion. But these are our children — we care for and love them until they become people we disagree with?”
During his comments at the school board meeting, Brine inferred he wanted to see the teachers fired.
On Thursday, he said he hopes to see them held publicly accountable for their posts.
He declined to provide names or examples to the Advertiser Democrat of what he had witnessed online.
SAD 17 has policies directing how district equipment may be used by staff, including for social media and limiting participation in political activities. It also includes discussing candidates for office in the classroom or wearing apparel with political messages in school buildings.
It does not place First Amendment limits on staff outside of work.
“I feel it’s important to let people be heard as long as it’s within the boundaries of our public meeting rules,” school board Chairman Troy Ripley of Paris told the Advertiser Democrat, adding it is not the responsibility of the board to be involved with matters of staff conduct.
“Employee conduct is covered by their contracts,” he said. “The protocol is for citizens to contact school and then district administration; discipline is done through the appropriate channels.”
