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The Times looks at three schools in three counties to see if teachers exercised their right to vote in the September primary.
By ALICIA CALDWELL, BARBARA BEHRENDT KELLY RYAN and SARAH SCHWEITZER
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 29, 2000
Imagine you could vote on your boss. Or help choose the people who would set your salary. Or weigh in on those who tell you how to do your job.
Would you go to the polls?
Teachers had just that opportunity in September's primary election. Did they take the opportunity to control their destinies?
The St. Petersburg Times looked at teacher voting patterns at local public schools in three counties, and the result was a mixed bag. Teachers at two schools turned out at about twice the rate of the voters countywide, while at the third school, teachers were only slightly more likely to vote than voters at large.
Polls show education is one of the more important issues on the minds of voters during this election season, a sentiment that is reflected daily in the campaign literature that arrives in voters' mailboxes.
Doug Jamerson, a former state education commissioner from St. Petersburg, said teachers ought to seize the opportunity not only to exert their political clout, but to provide an example for the young people they influence.
If teachers want to be treated as community leaders, they ought to make a point of telling parents, friends and others about their thoughts on education policy and politics, he said.
"You've got a civic responsibility and a professional responsibility to support people who support you," Jamerson said. "Teachers could have a decided impact on the political process. These are professional people."
The Times checked a list of teachers at the three schools against records at local supervisor of elections offices. Records on voter registration and whether a person cast a ballot in a particular election are public.This is how teachers turned out for September's primary at those three schools:
More than half the teachers who were registered voters at Forest Ridge Elementary School in Citrus County turned out to vote, nearly twice the percentage of the county at large.
At Countryside High School, 47 percent of registered voters went to the polls -- more than twice the turnout of all Pinellas voters.
At Benito Middle School in North Tampa, however, about 20 percent of teachers registered to vote cast ballots. In Hillsborough, turnout for voters at large was 17 percent.
Chris Becker, a teacher who ran unsuccessfully for Citrus County superintendent, said he believes teachers are a formidable political force. However, he said he's afraid his colleagues don't always realize it.
"I just don't think they truly understand the political influence they have, not just themselves but with their close friends and family," said Becker, a former teachers union president.
Michelle Owen takes the privilege of voting seriously.
The 31-year-old teacher at Benito Middle School near Tampa Palms says she prominently displays her "I voted" sticker on election day. It's important, she says, that her sixth-grade charges know she considers it an important civic duty.
But the September primary passed without her visit to the polls. She had just become engaged; school had just started.
"It just slipped my mind," she said.
At Benito, a 4-year-old school, nearly three-quarters of teachers were registered to vote. But only 20 percent of those registered chose to vote in September, when three School Board positions were up for grabs in Hillsborough County.
However, the county's top three administrators and one area director are all registered to vote, and three of them cast ballots in September's primary.
Across the county, 17 percent of the half-million registered voters voted in September, or 81,000 residents.
Officials with the teachers union in Hillsborough say they go to great lengths to encourage teacher turnout at the polls. They put frequent reminders in newsletters, distribute fliers and put up street corner signs.
Several teachers said the union, the Hillsborough Teachers Classroom Association, held little sway over their voting selections, much less whether to vote.
"I use my brain, not theirs," said Liz Sigmond, a sixth-grade language arts and reading teacher who lives in Pasco County. "Besides, I don't always agree with them."
Yvonne Lyons, the union's executive director, says that the union has influence over teachers and can deliver votes, even though voters elected only two of the three School Board candidates the union endorsed in this year's elections.
"We still have a significant number of our members and non-members who recognize that we have gone through the process of interviewing the candidates and doing the legwork to identify which candidates are sensitive to education needs and are willing to listen to the person in the classroom," she said.
Asked about the turnout of teachers at Benito, Lyons said teachers are not exempt from the frustration that many Americans express about government.
"A lot of people, teachers included, think that politics is a dirty word," she said. "And sometimes because politics seems so far removed from what they are doing in the classroom on a daily basis, they don't feel a connection to it."
The Pinellas teachers union went all out to get teachers to the polls.
They sent letters and made phone calls, urging teachers to vote in the September primary. Union officials offered coffee and doughnuts to schools where 80 percent of teachers went to the polls.
But only six of the district's 143 schools got the doughnuts. Countryside High School was not one of them.
Of the 98 teachers at Countryside, nearly 88 percent are registered. About 47 percent of teachers who are registered went to the polls on election day. In contrast, five of the district's top administrators -- Howard Hinesley, John Stewart, Judi Westfall, John Bowen and Lansing Johansen -- are all registered and all voted.
"I think it's everybody's responsibility to vote," said Hinesley, the superintendent who said his high school social studies teacher taught him never to miss an election. "You, to some degree, forfeit the credibility of your complaints if you don't take advantage."
Countryside, which has 1,939 students in the northeastern part of the county, has a politically active faculty, union officials said. They noted that Countryside teachers voted at more than twice the rate of the general public -- 46.5 percent compared with 20 percent.
"There's still a lot of apathy, and people who are turned off by politics," said Rob McMahon, Pinellas Classroom Teachers Association president.
Count Scott Kitchen among them.
Kitchen, a social studies teacher, said he usually votes. In the primary, he didn't feel a connection to the candidates or the issues.
"We weren't that interested in it," said Kitchen, 47.
Gregory Bryant, a science teacher and golf coach, is a registered independent. In past election years, he couldn't participate in most primaries. For the first time this year, Pinellas School Board races were non-partisan and open to all voters.
One reason he didn't vote, he said, was that he was busy with golf practice. He said he didn't hear much talk about the election in the teachers' lounge.
"It could have slipped my mind that it changed and was open," said Bryant, 50. "I will pay attention next time."
Jade Moore, executive director of the teachers union, said at least $13,000 was spent trying to get district employees to vote. Periodically, the union also holds voter registration drives, and now 85 percent of the membership is registered.
Moore, who said he has never missed an opportunity to cast a ballot, was not surprised at Countryside's voting rate. He expected teachers to vote at a higher rate than the general public, yet also expected that the recent primary would not have inspired many teachers.
Incumbents were running in two School Board races, and a teacher ran in the third. Despite recent emotional debate about school choice and state accountability initiatives, Moore characterized the campaigns as "bland." Plus, he said, no candidates were so offensive that teachers would have come out in droves to support their opponents.
Education issues were among the most important that Citrus County voters contemplated in their September primary.
Three School Board seats were decided, and both Democrats and Republicans had to choose their nominee for superintendent for the November election.
About half the teachers at Forest Ridge Elementary availed themselves of the opportunity to help choose their bosses.
Forty of the school's 42 teachers were registered, and 52.5 percent voted, nearly twice the overall county turnout of 27.7 percent.
Forest Ridge Elementary, nestled between Beverly Hills and Citrus Hills, two large subdivisions, opened in August.
Angelo Arcadipane, 42, a teacher at Forest Ridge, said he and others were so busy moving into the new school, he didn't have much time to think about the September election. That and scheduling for his own family kept him from voting.
"I just wasn't able to get to the polls," he said. "I just assumed that it was going to turn out the way I wanted."
Another Forest Ridge teacher, Joseph Mattingly, 39, said he would not have missed the chance in September to vote out one official and vote in another. The opinions of teachers matter, he said, both inside and outside the voting booth.
"These are important races because they impact my life as a teacher," he said.
Citrus High teacher Deborah Platt, 43, who leads the political action committee for the Citrus County Education Association, said some teachers are apathetic, but many are "starting to see that they cannot afford to stand by and not be active in politics because public school teachers are taking too many hits from the politicians over the years."
All seven of the top administrators in the district are registered and only Assistant Superintendent Linda Kelley did not cast a ballot in September.
"I'm embarrassed," she said. "Normally I would have voted. I had intended to vote."
But Kelley, 52, drove home in her district car and didn't want to do the private business of voting in the public car. She was stranded at home without a private car, but said she still felt confident she knew who the winners would be in the superintendent primaries.
David Watson, 54, the executive director of management services and a former Citrus School Board member, voted because he thinks it's his civic duty, and he was interested in choosing his future boss.
"I also don't think I have the right to complain if I don't vote, and I certainly hate to give up that right," he said.
That's true of Patti Boylan, who is always inspired during election season. Boylan, a marine biology teacher who has been at Countryside High for 22 years, said she encourages her voting-age students to vote. She tells them to make sure their parents are wearing "I voted" stickers at the end of the day.
"I think all citizens have a responsibility," Boylan, 58, said. "Teachers should definitely take it upon ourselves to vote."
Boylan says she doesn't think teachers have more of a responsibility to vote than anyone else. But Moore, the Pinellas teachers union leader, does.
"Every decision that affects our lives is political," Moore said. "We are the role models for children. If we can't vote or participate in the political process, how can we expect other people to do it?"