I Refuse - the fingerprinting of Maine school teachers brings protest

Progressive, The, August, 2000 by Bernie Huebner

Teachers in Maine revolt against fingerprinting

I've been teaching elementary schoolchildren in central Maine for the past twenty years. We have an unstated bargain between us: I help them grow a little older while they help me stay young. They've kept their side of the bargain, and I've tried to keep mine. But I may not be able to keep it much longer.

I am one of 47,000 Maine school employees currently required to submit to fingerprinting and FBI criminal history records checks as part of a hysterical state attempt to expose and root out supposed pedophiles. If we refuse to comply, we lose our certification and our jobs. I, and at last count fifty-six other teachers representing 1,050 years of experience in education, refuse to comply.

Why would teachers from all across Maine take such a radical step--one that will force us to abandon our jobs, our careers, and the work we love? Because we believe we have no moral choice. We see the law as a clear violation of our rights. This obscene and ineffective law strikes at the heart of the constitutional guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure. We must choose between abandoning our jobs and livelihoods and professional passion, on the one hand, and abandoning one of our most deeply held principles on the other: presumed innocence. It is no choice at all.

It all began in 1997. No one seems to know who initially proposed the idea, but with virtually no notice the Maine Legislature unanimously passed "An Act to Provide Record Checks of Elementary and Secondary Education Employees and Applicants." But due to the state's unpreparedness to implement the law, it did not finally begin to take effect until this summer. Last winter and spring, a significant number of teachers waged a campaign that finally convinced the legislature to amend the law by exempting all existing school personnel from having to be fingerprinted. The bill went to Governor Angus King's desk for his signature in late April.

For the dozens of teachers who were refusing to submit, it was a hopeful moment. But after all of five minutes of consideration, King vetoed the new bill. He thus left in place the original draconian law requiring the fingerprinting and checking of all teachers, administrators, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, coaches, secretaries, custodians, even contractors like electricians and plumbers and staff development consultants who might come in contact with children, no matter how fleetingly.

The governor's veto sealed the professional fate of the fifty-seven of us, plus many more who may be leaving without making public declarations.

Now that the politicking is all over, we continue to refuse.

We arrived at this position by different routes. Suzanne Malis-Andersen, a middle school teacher, was the very first to publicly refuse. She was raised for the role.

"My strong sense of liberty comes from my father, who emigrated from Poland with his family in 1920," she testified at a hearing before the Education Committee in February. "He was determined that his children would never take for granted our constitutional rights. I can vividly remember him reading those first three words `We the People' and explaining that our government is made for us, by us, and answerable to us. He instructed us to defend these principles by standing firm for them." She recalled how he took her and her siblings on a ferry to show them the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where he had arrived in America. Suzanne has since had his name inscribed in the Immigrant Wall of Honor there.

I took a while longer to come clear about what I had to do. Back in February of 1999, I began investigating what struck me as a totally nonsensical law. I asked the state leadership of the Maine Education Association where the data came from that showed there was a problem of pedophiles in the schools. They admitted that there was none, that during the committee's hearing on the bill there had been only a few anecdotes offered. Still, the Maine Education Association had caved in and supported passage of the law in 1997.

I also called all the various state criminal records agencies. Amazingly, they had no data, either. Where, exactly, was this problem no one could document? Finally, on October 1, I sent a letter to the Portland Press Herald challenging the effectiveness and constitutionality of the law and asking what other educators thought. The Press Herald managed to lose the letter twice, so it did not appear until November 26. It was followed by virtual silence.

But Suzanne's great personal courage finally got things rolling. When her picture and declaration of refusal appeared on the front page of the Bangor Daily News in early January, I hurriedly phoned her school during my lunch break that day and left a message for her to call me, a perfect stranger, at home that evening. So, apparently, did a couple of dozen other teachers from around Maine. An organizational meeting followed shortly thereafter, and then the issue caught fire. It was as if Rosa Parks's bus had been driven to Maine and Suzanne had gotten off. We called ourselves Maine Educators Against Fingerprinting (MEAF) and had a web site up within weeks (www. mainemarketplace.com/fprint).