CUMBERLAND — Parents and community members are rallying around Greely High School in Cumberland in solidarity this week following a controversial decision by the Trump Administration regarding transgender athletes. 

“This school supports all students here,” local parent Kate Perrin said Thursday night. 

On Monday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement indicating the Maine Department of Education, Maine Principals’ Association and the school have violated Title IX, a 1972 anti-discrimination law. 

At issue is a transgender girl from Greely High School who competed in and won a high school girls’ track and field competition. The department began an investigation into the state and the school on Feb. 25. It came just days after President Donald Trump publicly clashed with Gov. Janet Mills in Washington over her refusal to abide by a presidential order banning transgender athletes from competing in school sports on or against teams not associated with their birth gender. 

On Monday, the department indicated Maine has violated Title IX, which was written to prevent sex discrimination in education. The department argued that allowing transgender girls to compete alongside girls is unfair, and therefore discriminatory under Title IX. 

Greely High School, as part of SAD 51, caters to students from Cumberland and North Yarmouth. Andrea Berry, a parent of a former GHS student and chair of the select board in North Yarmouth, said most members of the SAD51 community feel besieged by political interests from outside the state. 

“It has just been disheartening, and hard to be a member of this community,” she said. “I think all of us as parents, all of us as caring neighbors and friends were hurting. It is a disgrace, what has happened.” 

Berry joined an audience Thursday night of more than 45 people at an SAD 51 school board meeting. The meeting itself was routine – the only agenda item was a budget workshop – but it’s the first school board meeting since the department’s Monday decision.  

The crowd was so large that there were not enough chairs, leaving some to sit on the floor. The attendees said they simply wanted to voice their support of the school and the district during the public comment period. 

Six people took to the podium to speak in favor of the district and the school. They also spoke in support of LGBTQIA+ people, and transgender students in particular, and were not shy in their criticism of the Trump Administration. 

“The truth and actual legal precedent is that all athletes who want to compete in sports are protected by Title IX,” said Hillary Leeman, of West Poland, a retired science, health and biology teacher. “Simply put, hating or being prejudiced against transgender female athletes is merely the opinion of a loud, closed-minded person pushing their own biased beliefs, and that moral and ethical failing on their part does not make it acceptable and it definitely does not make it the law.” 

Perrin, who also attended the meeting and is a parent of a high-school aged child, said that the kids also feel oppressed by outsiders. 

“They’re annoyed. They just want to be kids,” she said. “They don’t want national politics impacting their adolescence.” 

Perrin said Thursday that the community is not done expressing itself on the issue. An ad-hoc group of parents are organizing a rally on Sunday at 11 a.m. Participants, she said, will be standing on sidewalks around the school campus property in solidarity. 

“I think it’s just rallying support and getting a visual reminder of our support for LGBTQIA+ rights,” she said. 

The department has given Maine a 10-day deadline to comply, or risk losing federal funding.