AUGUSTA – Requiring teachers to be fingerprinted makes them “feel weak and submissive,” intrudes upon their civil rights, and dissuades people from entering the profession, according to the tenacious opponents of the 4-year-old law.

But repealing the state statute would endanger children by making Maine a haven for pedophiles, said the law’s supporters Wednesday at a legislative hearing on a new set of bills aimed at repealing or restricting the requirement.

Both sides of the fingerprinting issue showed up before the Education Committee to debate:

. LD 890, sponsored by Rep. David Trahan, R-Waldoboro, which would restrict fingerprinting to new hires.

. LD 1198, sponsored by Arthur Mayo, R-Bath, and LD 1250, sponsored by Lois Snowe Mello, R-Poland, which would allow former teachers who quit because of their philosophical beliefs against fingerprinting to return to the profession exempt from the requirement; Mayo’s bill would also exempt all but new hires.

. LD 653, sponsored by Rep. Gerald Davis, R-Falmouth, which would repeal the fingerprinting requirement altogether.

Dick Gray, president of the Maine School Boards Association, said fingerprinting is justified to “help assure that schools are safe places for students.”

He suggested creating a new bill to allow the state to reveal the number of people who have lost their certification based on the results of fingerprinting and criminal history checks.

“Based on this factual evidence you and the rest of us can be aided in making a determination if this law was necessary and has been successful,” he told the committee.

Commissioner of Education Susan Gendron opposed all the bills. She said she would be in favor of publicizing the number and type of infractions without revealing names. She said the department would need to work with the attorney general to clarify exactly what information could be revealed.

Currently the results of fingerprinting and criminal history checks are given only to the Maine Department of Education, which by law can’t reveal the information to anyone, even to the individual seeking recertification.

Only about 40 people attended the hearing, which was held at the civic center in anticipation of a larger crowd. But those 40 educators, policy-makers and parents made up in passion what they lacked in numbers.

James Skoglund of St. George, a former Democratic lawmaker who served on the Education Committee seven years ago when the fingerprinting issue first surfaced, said he opposed the bill at that time, and he wished he had been “more adamant earlier.”

The bill has “nothing to do with protecting children – it’s a symbolic disempowerment of a vast segment of our society. It makes people feel submissive,” he said.

But Donna Strickler of the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault said abuse exists everywhere. “Every rape crisis center in the state has provided services to victims of abuse by school officials,” she said.

Rob Walker, president of the Maine Education Association, the state’s teachers union, urged the committee to repeal the mandate, saying children haven’t been made any safer by the law.

The need for fingerprinting was “oversold” when former Commissioner of Education Duke Albanese suggested “an undisclosed number of unfit educators must be lurking in the schools. Nothing in MEA’s experience with this legislation has supported that assumption,” Walker said.

The Maine Superintendents’ Association felt differently. “The only thing that truly prevents pedophiles … from gaining access to the children in our schools is our fingerprinting system,” said Superintendent Jack Mara of SAD 11 (the Gardiner area).

Speaking in opposition to all of the bills, Jeffrey Pierce, president of the Maine Parents Teachers Association, said the bills weren’t about civil rights, “but about a defenseless child’s right to an education free of abuse and fear.”

Sixty percent of the state’s 15,690 teachers have been fingerprinted so far during the bill’s phase-in, Walker said. By the time a new law could be enacted, 20 percent would remain, he said.

Kathryn Armstrong, a special education teacher from New Harbor who left her position because of the fingerprint requirement, said the state has been wasting money by requiring female teachers to be fingerprinted when the vast majority of sexual perpetrators are male.

The Education Committee’s co-chairman, Sen. Neria Douglass, D-Auburn, said legislators would likely use ideas from one or two bills “as a vehicle” to change the law. “We’re balancing personal liberties with the value of keeping children safe,” said Douglass, who has, in the past, “voted both ways.”