Four newcomers are competing for two open seats on Bangor’s School Committee.
All four are parents of children in the Bangor school system and two have experience working as educators.
None of the candidates have held elected office before, meaning both the School Committee and City Council races in Bangor this year are full of new faces.
Candidates listed a variety of issues, including support for teachers and staff, test scores, communication with families and helping students who need extra support as key areas of focus.
The two open seats on the seven-member School Committee are currently held by Marwa Hassanien and Imke Jandreau.
Election Day is Nov. 4 and voters can request an absentee ballot through Oct. 30.
School Committee candidates are listed below in the order they appear on the ballot.
Frank Casella
Frank Casella, 44, has lived in Bangor for eight years. He works in construction, resides in the Fairmount neighborhood and is a Republican. He has a child in first grade in the Bangor school system.
Casella is active on X, formerly known as Twitter, and has shared opinions online criticizing immigrants for not assimilating to American culture, “gender ideology” and the Muslim faith. He has written that “Islam is a backwards religion” and called people “whore” and “stupid commie retard.”
Casella said his family loves the teachers in Bangor but he was motivated to get involved with the School Committee when he noticed Maine’s education rankings and math and science scores dropping. He said he wasn’t sure why this was the case, adding, “I don’t know if it’s a lack of resources or if it’s something else that’s getting prioritized more.” He also said he’s concerned about how the goals set in the school department’s 10-year plan will be measured and if those goals will be reached.
He told the Bangor Daily News that learning disruptions during the pandemic could be hurting test scores and that the school department could consider strengthening opportunities for tutoring and extra help. In a social media post earlier this year, he wrote that Maine schools are “too focused on culture issues and not actually teaching.”
Casella also said that if he’s elected, he’d want to prioritize integrating technological advances like AI into school curricula. “It’s a tool that I think needs to be incorporated into some education,” he said, so that kids learn how to use it without becoming completely reliant on it.
Mallory Cook
Mallory Cook, 37, has lived in Bangor for nine years. She is a Democrat, lives in the Fairmount neighborhood and has a child in first grade in the Bangor school system.
Cook is the director of training and early educator engagement at the Maine Education Association and previously worked as a teacher for 10 years. She said she decided to run because her work has shown her that school boards don’t always have many educator voices represented.
“I think it’s really important to have advocates on school committees who are going to create that space and maintain open channels of communication with practicing educators to understand the challenges they’re facing and the supports that they need so that we can meet students’ academic, social and emotional needs,” she said.
Cook said she thinks the school department should work on strengthening engagement with families and caregivers, which could help address chronic absenteeism.
She also named adding more professional development opportunities for staff, prioritizing students’ social and emotional needs while maintaining a high standard of academic excellence and bringing both sides of the city together to make a more cohesive school community as her goals if she’s elected.
Cook also noted demographic shifts in Bangor in the last 10 years, saying training to help educators support growing populations of homeless, multilingual and disabled students would strengthen students’ feelings of safety and belonging in the school system.
Laura Otis
Laura Otis, 39, moved to Bangor three years ago and lives in the Tree Streets neighborhood. She has three children in the Bangor school system. Prior to having children, Otis worked as a social worker for people dealing with homelessness and mental illness.
While Otis said she is a Democrat because she believes governments should fund robust social support systems, she added that she believes religious and political agendas should be separated from the work of running schools.
“The beauty of the public school system is that it’s open to everybody,” she said. “There needs to be an appreciation and a respect for difference.”
“Schools are the access points for all the diverse needs of the whole community,” Otis said. She added that she wants to push for the Universal Design for Learning model in Bangor schools, which aims to make learning more flexible and accommodate multiple different learning styles.
As a frequent volunteer at school gardens in the city, Otis said she’d like to incorporate more outdoor and experiential learning into school curricula.
Otis said schools should be a part of combating issues like food insecurity and building a stronger community, noting Old Town Elementary’s free farm stand as an example of a project she’d like to replicate in Bangor.
Part of the unofficial Bangor School Garden Network, Otis said she designed the garden at Downeast School and secured a grant to redo the Fruit Street School garden. The group proposed a partnership last year with FoodCorps, an AmeriCorps partner organization that uses gardens and agriculture to provide kids with healthy food in schools. The project was approved, but Otis said she is hoping to be creative in finding new funding sources after AmeriCorps was defunded by the federal government.
Otis also said she wants to streamline communication with families about what’s going on in schools and how the school budget is being spent, and bridge the divide between schools on the east and west sides of the city, suggesting projects like a pen pal program to get students from different neighborhood schools to interact with each other before they get to high school.
Benjamin Speed
Benjamin Speed, 45, worked for 14 years teaching multimedia design at Hancock County Technical Center in Ellsworth before moving to Bangor eight years ago. He is a Democrat, resides in Little City and has a child who attends Bangor High School.
Speed said he was a member of the local teachers union when he lived in Ellsworth and represented those teachers during two contract negotiations. He now works in the public relations department at Northern Light Health and holds an adjunct teaching position at Husson University’s communications school.
“I appreciate the work that they’re doing in the areas of making sure that students and staff alike are creating an inclusive environment where folks belong,” he said.
Speed named increasing opportunities for career and technical education and the arts as priorities if elected to the committee.
“I’ve seen firsthand as a [career and technical education] teacher how students can really flourish in career and technical education programs,” he said. He added that one of his two children is a trainee with a professional ballet company, which has strengthened his belief that “the arts teach us how to think.”
Speed also said he wants the school department to continue working to bring the entire school community together and make sure “that we are living up to our principles of providing access and opportunities and places to belong at all schools.” He named ensuring equitable access to technology and other resources as one example of how the department can bridge divides between neighborhood schools.
He added that his own experience dealing with food and housing insecurity when he was growing up made learning in school difficult and he wants the School Committee to work with the City Council and community organizations to invest in social services for families that are struggling.