This year, such critical offices as the office of the President of the United States and those of Maine’s Senators and Representatives in Congress are on the ballot. But one race also plays an important role in shaping our community: the school board. Though often overlooked due to the drama and broadly consequential nature of national politics, the board makes important decisions for the students of RSU 71; therefore, the whole community.

This year, there are two open seats for the school board and three candidates. These candidates are Ryan Otis, Laura Baker, and Ryan Harnden.

Ryan Otis

Ryan Otis is currently an incumbent board member on and the chair of the RSU 71 School Board. has lived in the Belfast area for 20-plus years. Otis is the father of three students in the RSU 71 School District. He has served on the school board since 2021, and later that year was named school board chair, a position which he has filled since then.

He attended the Maine Maritime Academy, where he studied International Business and Logistics, and later attended the University of Maine.

Otis has been involved with Rollie’s Bar and Grill in downtown Belfast since late 2004. He is active with many community organizations, including the Coastal Health Alliance and the Board of Penobscot Shores, a retirement community in the area.

Otis first became involved with the school district when he worked as a substitute teacher as well as a coach for various sports. He is running for school board because he wants to “See through the things we have started” on the school board. He added that he thought the current school board was strong and that it was moving in the right direction, so he wants to keep this direction and continue this work.

Laura Baker

Laura Baker was an educator for 48 years, 21 of those years in RSU 71 and its earlier iterations.

In the span of that career, she worked as a special education teacher, a principal, a general education classroom teacher, and more. Baker first moved to Belfast in 1974 and received a B.S. from Miami University in Ohio. She was an education major focused in reading. She also has a master’s degree in Special Education from UMaine Orono and a doctorate in Educational Leadership from UMaine, as well.

Over her career, a major theme, she says, has been equity. Baker cares deeply about issues of social justice and civil liberties, especially when these intersect with education.

“What has kept me going in education always has been figuring out how to work with those people who are often not given voice, often set aside, and put [those people] in the center," she said. "If we focus on people who have been marginalized it doesn’t hurt anybody else.”

She is running because she thinks: “Education in this country is at a critical juncture. There's a lot of pressure to silence people, a lot of pressure to silence accurate history, a lot of pressure to ban books, a lot of pressure to ban people — to say that individuals cannot use their chosen pronouns,” continuing, “...it's important to me to be involved in a way to protect civil liberties and their relationship to quality education.”  

Ryan Harnden

Ryan Harnden is currently an incumbent board member on the RSU 71 School Board.  Harnden has lived in Waldo County for 30-plus years and is the father of two students in RSU 71.

He attended first the University of Southern Maine, where he studied political science and economics, and during the pandemic took online classes with Western Governors University, where he got an undergraduate degree, and Fitchburg State University, where he got an MBA.

Harnden works at Mathews Brothers in Belfast and is a member of several community organizations, including the Lions Club and the Belfast Area Chamber of Commerce.

He said his school experience wasn’t great, so he wants to make school a better place for the students of RSU 71.

“There were times where I hoped that someone would see that I was having trouble and help me," he said. "Some teachers did but the system itself was kind of broken.  When I was a senior at Mount View, there was a huge public board meeting over a controversial subject and the board really listened to the students.  I thought that for the first time the adults in the room were going to listen to the kids and do something.”

That inspired Harnden to join the school board at RSU 3 later in his life, hoping to help students like him who were struggling.

The school board has many responsibilities, including approving new employees, choosing curriculum for the district’s students, creating budgets to decide how the district’s money will be used, creating and voting on policies that will shape education and life in RSU 71, and more.

Here’s what the three candidates said about their priorities if elected: Ryan Harnden said he wanted to hear more from students, a sentiment Laura Baker echoed.

Harnden said: “It’s kind of a strange system in Maine. I have been elected to the board by voters, but I do not represent them, I represent the kids of the district. That’s part of Maine law! So, it’s hard to represent the kids when we don’t hear from them as much.”

Baker said on this topic: “I think it's important to have more dialogue between the people that are recipients of the decisions of the board…the students are the people who receive the decisions the most and have the least voice.”

Ryan Otis said that maintaining RSU 71 facilities was top of mind for him.

“You can tell by our facilities that we’ve not had the greatest of maintenance priorities so that is something that has to be part of our future,” he said, adding that giving students opportunities they might not otherwise have was also important to him.

“Those that are in public education should be afforded all the opportunities to be the best they can be," he said.

Often, school board elections and the school board itself is overlooked, whether it be due to larger elections dominating the attention or the fact that many people simply see the school board itself as unimportant. But Harnden says that voters should pay closer attention to the school board.

“Again, for taxpayers, our budget is the largest portion of property taxes”, he said, continuing, “It’s important to pay attention and voice opinions, because I make decisions based on all of the information available to me including public input (especially student input).”

Baker said that this casting aside of the school board and its actions frustrated her.

“Everyone in the community that pays taxes supports the schools," she said. "You would think there would be interest. We’re all affected by what people learn about and how they learn about it and who is valued and who is not.”

Otis said that the “overarching political atomosphere” affected the attention given to the school board, as more prominent, national races might overtake the focus in the election, but as community members, it does affect all of us.

In such a contested and contentious political climate, many school boards around the country have seen heated political debates on issues including discrimination against transgender students and critical race theory in schools.

With political issues like these so ingrained within our current cultural conciousness, politics are under near-constant discussion in some school boards and school communities around the country leading to a melding of politics and education policy in ways that haven’t been seen in other eras.

Harnden says he won’t take this kind of politics to the board.

“I don’t want the realities of the current political climate to impact the operations of our schools," he said. “I don’t bring politics to the board, just common sense and logic."

He added that he wanted, “to put my own views aside to find the right answer for the students of RSU 71." 

Baker said that things like book banning wouldn’t come up during meetings, as the school board is: “assisted by the Maine School Board Association. Those policies include the right for students to be opted out of reading a particular book. RSU 71 has that policy. Therefore, there should be no discussion about book banning at a local school board meeting.”

Additionally, she said that larger issues of curriculum, like critical race theory, also wouldn’t be discussed.

“The State of Maine has a set of curriculum standards for history," she said. "Any discussions about larger curricular issues such as Critical Race Theory belong in the realm of the State, not the local school board.”

The office of permanent superintendent of RSU 71, though temporarily filled by interim Superintendent Bob England, remains open.

All of the candidates said being a part of the hiring process of the next permanent superintendent was a reason they were running for school board. 

“I had one goal when I got on the school board and that was to hire the next superintendent.” said Otis, continuing, “That didn’t happen on the first go around”, but saying if he was elected he would be a part of the candidate search and the decision making process. Baker said, “...there is going to be a new permanent superintendent chosen and I think that’s a very important task. Choosing somebody that has beliefs about equity and justice and voice and choice and safety is very important to me.” 

In the end, the candidates all said they brought unique things to the table.

Baker said that her long educational career gave her a greater understanding of the inner workings of schools as well as the impact policy can have on schools and students.

"I have taught in general and special education, I have been a special ed director, I’ve been a principal — in my DNA is education and learning and belief in learning — and that's something I bring that neither of the other two people bring.”

In her career when she was working as an administrator, she also spent extensive time working on budgets, another skill she says is important to the school board.

Otis’ prior board experience was what he said qualified him for another term, saying that his understanding of policy negotiation gives him a leg up in that regard.

“We’ve done a lot in the last few years in terms of contracts, so that’s a process in itself," he said. "We’ve done the best we could do balancing the fiscal responsibilies and the needs of the students.”

Otis also said that on the board, things were going on behind the scenes, and that he should stay on the board to see these things through.

Harnden said something similar, and that he hoped, with what the school board had accomplished during his term, voters would choose him on election day.

“It’s my hope that people in Belfast have seen how much time and effort I’ve put into serving the community over the past four years as a member of the board," he said.

Election day is November 5. 

Eliot Fowler is in eighth grade at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast and is founding editor and staff writer of the Troy Howard Gazette