Post by wvhsparent on May 3, 2007 6:36:43 GMT -6
www.dailyherald.com/search/printstory.asp?id=308863
Wrong tone for a local election?
Did Naperville’s school board campaigns get too negative?
By Melissa Jenco and Jake Griffin
Daily Herald Staff Writers
Posted Thursday, May 03, 2007
Serving on school boards is supposed to be about educational achievement, teacher excellence and quality facilities.
Ask candidates why they’re running for one of the unpaid, volunteer seats and almost invariably they’ll tell you, “It’s for the kids.”
But some say the focus in the recent elections in both Naperville school districts sometimes had nearly as much to do with intimidation, harassment and name-calling as with what’s best for students.
While the candidates themselves largely seemed to stay above the fray, certain factions of their supporters sometimes did not.
Election blogs, e-mails and message boards were the “Internet equivalent of anonymous name-calling at a schoolyard,” Naperville Unit District 203 contender Steve Deutsch said. “It was particularly nasty and brutish.”
Deutsch lost his race, and it would be easy to discount his remarks as sour grapes. But even some of the winners in the April 17 contest say they were concerned about the level of discourse that, in some cases, left candidates and even sitting school board members feeling threatened — both verbally and physically.
Alka Tyle won her election in Indian Prairie Unit District 204 but said she was disturbed that the campaign seemed to focus on old and supposedly decided issues and not the children.
“I was very disappointed, I must say,” she said. “It sets a bad precedent.”
In District 203, eight candidates ran for three seats in a race defined by issues involving facilities and taxes. Incumbent Suzyn Price and newcomers Mike Jaensch and Terry Fielden won 4-year seats.
In District 204, which serves portions of Naperville, Aurora, Plainfield and Bolingbrook, seven candidates competed for three seats. All the incumbents — Tyle, Mark Metzger and Curt Bradshaw — kept their seats.
Anonymous critics
Veiled by the anonymity of the Internet, discussion threads left on message boards in both districts sometimes devolved into fiery wars between candidates’ supporters.
Not all bloggers followed the slash-and-burn tactics, nor did all candidates feel they were treated poorly by opponents. But some said the criticism crossed the line between constructive debate and hostility.
District 204 board member Christine Vickers, who was not on the ballot, filed a police report after receiving what she called an “e-mail threat” that arrived in the early morning hours after Election Day and in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
“In the subject line it said, ‘Good Night Christine,’ and then in the body all it said was: ‘You’re next,’æ” she said. “I e-mailed this person back and told him I knew who he was and I didn’t understand his message, but I take it as a threat.”
Aurora police said they spoke with the e-mail author, but no charges were filed and the matter has been turned over to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.
In District 203, property taxes were a hot-button issue. Some candidates, including the Taxpayers Ticket of incumbent Mike Davitt and newcomers Jerome Buch and Dan Denys, called on the district to return some of the extra $45.6 million it now says it took after its successful 2002 referendum tax increase campaign.
Their opponents came out strongly against returning the money, saying it could send the district into deficit and lead to program cuts.
One Internet commentator referred to the Taxpayers Ticket as the “scumbag slate.” On another site, the same person called a fellow blogger a “Viagra-taking numbnuts.”
“Blogs are OK, but personal attacks have nothing to do with an election, and they got personal,” Davitt said. “They got nasty and they got vicious. I like blogs if you’re going to debate ideas intellectually. That’s what blogs should be for.”
Still, Davitt admits he called Price arrogant for implying the board could take credit for the district’s high test scores, and the Taxpayers Ticket Web site continually criticized the teachers union for its involvement in the election, accusing it of overstepping its legal and ethical bounds.
But Davitt said that was as hostile as his group got, and he stands by his comments.
The Taxpayers Ticket was also on the receiving end of barbs from other groups.
A flier created by the People United for Responsible Education said Davitt’s slate wanted to outsource transportation and custodial services to private companies, thereby “losing the control to strictly screen employees for sex offenders and qualified drivers.”
A flier distributed by the teachers union said the Taxpayers Ticket would “bankrupt the district to ‘solve’ a phony crisis.”
“If this coalition of tax hawks and fundamentalists is able to take charge of the board, then the long-term future of the district will be threatened, both fiscally and academically,” it said.
A group of parents called Quality Education 203 also traded criticism with the Taxpayers Ticket.
The trio referred to Quality Education 203 as pathetic and deceitful while the parents group said no one with good intentions would vote for the Taxpayers Ticket and accused it of having “highly suspect motives.”
“These three do not have the best interest of the children or our district at the core of their campaign. We cannot trust them to guide our district,” Quality Education said on its Web site.
Thom Higgins of Quality Education 203 said that while the group may have been critical of the Taxpayers Ticket, he felt “their positions were so extreme it almost forced us into extreme rhetoric to explain them.”
For some, the harsh tone of the election went beyond fliers and the Internet. Deutsch and Davitt both said they experienced incidents in which they felt physically threatened by people approaching them.
Price said an anonymous blog worried her because it said she doesn’t belong in the community.
“When you say things like that, you dehumanize people and you give other people permission, people who don’t have a lot of judgment, you give them permission to do things,” she said. “And that made me a little nervous that somebody was going to drive by my house and do something.”
‘Passive collusion’
Reggie Felton, director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association, said emotional issues often become the galvanizing force of contentious school board elections. Such campaigns, though, are rare for volunteer boards like those in Naperville and Indian Prairie.
“What (usually) influences the contentiousness is a single issue that captures the emotions of a single neighborhood, section of town or the whole community,” he said. “While there may be more important issues, it’s these emotional issues that take precedence during the election.”
Michelle Davis, who came in fourth in the District 204 race, said she believes the negative treatment she received on one message board in particular led to her defeat. She admonished the incumbent victors for not speaking out against such cyber mud-slinging.
“The passive collusion was one of the saddest aspects and poorest reflections on our district,” she said. “That site was filled with hurtful dialogue, twisted lies and racist jokes.”
Longtime board member Mark Metzger said it was not his responsibility to dispute information disseminated on the Internet, and he believes the hullabaloo on the Web had little impact on the race — especially when only 10 percent of registered voters turned out.
“I don’t remember Michelle riding to my rescue when falsehoods were posted about me in the last three years,” he said. “You’ve got a 10 percent turnout, so I think it’s a little naive to think the message board played that large a role.”
Metzger and other incumbents said they did not participate in the message boards.
One thread on a message board accused Davis of using the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy as a campaign tactic to get her name on the front page of a local newspaper on Election Day. Davis did her undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech and included that information on questionnaires sent to candidates by newspapers weeks before the election.
The newspaper quoted Davis about her dismay at what had happened at her former school.
“Obviously she contacted the papers to take advantage of this horrible tragedy for her personal gain!” wrote one anonymous poster. “How would a reporter know that quickly who went where?”
Metzger, who coasted to re-election, called the District 204 campaign “a little more contentious than they have been in the past,” and Tyle said, “Elections should be conducted in a different way and that wasn’t the case.”
Price said contrary views can have a great deal of value. But this time around she felt some groups were too strident in their arguments, which led to the hostile tone that shadowed the election.
“I think these are people who feel very strongly about what they believe and people don’t understand and I think they’re frustrated by that,” she said. “They firmly believe they are right and they can’t understand why people would disagree with that.”
Political labels
In Illinois, school board elections are supposed to be non-partisan. But that meant nothing to bloggers, who were not shy about using political labels.
One Web site called the District 203 election results a “left-wing Democratic takeover of the school board” and referred to Price as a “tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.” Another criticized the Taxpayers Ticket for having a “hidden social agenda that is far too conservative for the moderate residents of this district.”
One Web poster wrote, “the Republicans were trounced in November and the same will happen in April.”
“It’s extremely partisan and a person’s ideology is what made this election so contentious,” Davitt said. “The bottom line is you had two ideologies, conservative ideology and a liberal ideology and that’s why people became so emotional … it was about education in a conservative fashion or a liberal fashion.”
Looking to the future
How the April elections will affect the new boards or future elections remains to be seen.
Price is concerned the hostility could discourage people from running.
“People who are smart and engaged are not going to want to get attacked and that’s my concern about this, that the people we want to run on the board, whatever position they’re going to take … are not going to want to do it,” she said.
District 204 challenger Leanne Lyons said she’ll never seek public office again and believes her livelihood was threatened by things written about her on some message boards. She blamed her defeat on a Daily Herald columnist who directed readers to a message board that criticized her candidacy.
“Once somebody of any credibility plants a seed of doubt and after that was done, it was almost impossible to rebound,” Lyons said.
The National School Boards Association’s Felton said time usually is the greatest factor in soothing the pains of a contentious election, but also suggests board members and superintendents should take responsibility for charting the path back to a focus on education.
“The superintendent and board leadership need to lay out a plan to rebuild the confidence of the community and the relationships in the community,” he said. “They should focus on an issue that is important to the education of the district’s students.”
District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis said mending fences is an ongoing part of the job.
“As a superintendent, I’m always trying to be someone who moves the district forward and builds as much consensus as possible,” he said.
Name-calling aside, he was happy to see people passionately debating the issues.
“(But) you have to do that in a respectful manner,” he said. “On some occasions people … weren’t as respectful as they could have been, but it’s a very important debate and I’m glad people engaged in it.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dailyherald.com
Wrong tone for a local election?
Did Naperville’s school board campaigns get too negative?
By Melissa Jenco and Jake Griffin
Daily Herald Staff Writers
Posted Thursday, May 03, 2007
Serving on school boards is supposed to be about educational achievement, teacher excellence and quality facilities.
Ask candidates why they’re running for one of the unpaid, volunteer seats and almost invariably they’ll tell you, “It’s for the kids.”
But some say the focus in the recent elections in both Naperville school districts sometimes had nearly as much to do with intimidation, harassment and name-calling as with what’s best for students.
While the candidates themselves largely seemed to stay above the fray, certain factions of their supporters sometimes did not.
Election blogs, e-mails and message boards were the “Internet equivalent of anonymous name-calling at a schoolyard,” Naperville Unit District 203 contender Steve Deutsch said. “It was particularly nasty and brutish.”
Deutsch lost his race, and it would be easy to discount his remarks as sour grapes. But even some of the winners in the April 17 contest say they were concerned about the level of discourse that, in some cases, left candidates and even sitting school board members feeling threatened — both verbally and physically.
Alka Tyle won her election in Indian Prairie Unit District 204 but said she was disturbed that the campaign seemed to focus on old and supposedly decided issues and not the children.
“I was very disappointed, I must say,” she said. “It sets a bad precedent.”
In District 203, eight candidates ran for three seats in a race defined by issues involving facilities and taxes. Incumbent Suzyn Price and newcomers Mike Jaensch and Terry Fielden won 4-year seats.
In District 204, which serves portions of Naperville, Aurora, Plainfield and Bolingbrook, seven candidates competed for three seats. All the incumbents — Tyle, Mark Metzger and Curt Bradshaw — kept their seats.
Anonymous critics
Veiled by the anonymity of the Internet, discussion threads left on message boards in both districts sometimes devolved into fiery wars between candidates’ supporters.
Not all bloggers followed the slash-and-burn tactics, nor did all candidates feel they were treated poorly by opponents. But some said the criticism crossed the line between constructive debate and hostility.
District 204 board member Christine Vickers, who was not on the ballot, filed a police report after receiving what she called an “e-mail threat” that arrived in the early morning hours after Election Day and in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
“In the subject line it said, ‘Good Night Christine,’ and then in the body all it said was: ‘You’re next,’æ” she said. “I e-mailed this person back and told him I knew who he was and I didn’t understand his message, but I take it as a threat.”
Aurora police said they spoke with the e-mail author, but no charges were filed and the matter has been turned over to the DuPage County state’s attorney’s office.
In District 203, property taxes were a hot-button issue. Some candidates, including the Taxpayers Ticket of incumbent Mike Davitt and newcomers Jerome Buch and Dan Denys, called on the district to return some of the extra $45.6 million it now says it took after its successful 2002 referendum tax increase campaign.
Their opponents came out strongly against returning the money, saying it could send the district into deficit and lead to program cuts.
One Internet commentator referred to the Taxpayers Ticket as the “scumbag slate.” On another site, the same person called a fellow blogger a “Viagra-taking numbnuts.”
“Blogs are OK, but personal attacks have nothing to do with an election, and they got personal,” Davitt said. “They got nasty and they got vicious. I like blogs if you’re going to debate ideas intellectually. That’s what blogs should be for.”
Still, Davitt admits he called Price arrogant for implying the board could take credit for the district’s high test scores, and the Taxpayers Ticket Web site continually criticized the teachers union for its involvement in the election, accusing it of overstepping its legal and ethical bounds.
But Davitt said that was as hostile as his group got, and he stands by his comments.
The Taxpayers Ticket was also on the receiving end of barbs from other groups.
A flier created by the People United for Responsible Education said Davitt’s slate wanted to outsource transportation and custodial services to private companies, thereby “losing the control to strictly screen employees for sex offenders and qualified drivers.”
A flier distributed by the teachers union said the Taxpayers Ticket would “bankrupt the district to ‘solve’ a phony crisis.”
“If this coalition of tax hawks and fundamentalists is able to take charge of the board, then the long-term future of the district will be threatened, both fiscally and academically,” it said.
A group of parents called Quality Education 203 also traded criticism with the Taxpayers Ticket.
The trio referred to Quality Education 203 as pathetic and deceitful while the parents group said no one with good intentions would vote for the Taxpayers Ticket and accused it of having “highly suspect motives.”
“These three do not have the best interest of the children or our district at the core of their campaign. We cannot trust them to guide our district,” Quality Education said on its Web site.
Thom Higgins of Quality Education 203 said that while the group may have been critical of the Taxpayers Ticket, he felt “their positions were so extreme it almost forced us into extreme rhetoric to explain them.”
For some, the harsh tone of the election went beyond fliers and the Internet. Deutsch and Davitt both said they experienced incidents in which they felt physically threatened by people approaching them.
Price said an anonymous blog worried her because it said she doesn’t belong in the community.
“When you say things like that, you dehumanize people and you give other people permission, people who don’t have a lot of judgment, you give them permission to do things,” she said. “And that made me a little nervous that somebody was going to drive by my house and do something.”
‘Passive collusion’
Reggie Felton, director of federal relations for the National School Boards Association, said emotional issues often become the galvanizing force of contentious school board elections. Such campaigns, though, are rare for volunteer boards like those in Naperville and Indian Prairie.
“What (usually) influences the contentiousness is a single issue that captures the emotions of a single neighborhood, section of town or the whole community,” he said. “While there may be more important issues, it’s these emotional issues that take precedence during the election.”
Michelle Davis, who came in fourth in the District 204 race, said she believes the negative treatment she received on one message board in particular led to her defeat. She admonished the incumbent victors for not speaking out against such cyber mud-slinging.
“The passive collusion was one of the saddest aspects and poorest reflections on our district,” she said. “That site was filled with hurtful dialogue, twisted lies and racist jokes.”
Longtime board member Mark Metzger said it was not his responsibility to dispute information disseminated on the Internet, and he believes the hullabaloo on the Web had little impact on the race — especially when only 10 percent of registered voters turned out.
“I don’t remember Michelle riding to my rescue when falsehoods were posted about me in the last three years,” he said. “You’ve got a 10 percent turnout, so I think it’s a little naive to think the message board played that large a role.”
Metzger and other incumbents said they did not participate in the message boards.
One thread on a message board accused Davis of using the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy as a campaign tactic to get her name on the front page of a local newspaper on Election Day. Davis did her undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech and included that information on questionnaires sent to candidates by newspapers weeks before the election.
The newspaper quoted Davis about her dismay at what had happened at her former school.
“Obviously she contacted the papers to take advantage of this horrible tragedy for her personal gain!” wrote one anonymous poster. “How would a reporter know that quickly who went where?”
Metzger, who coasted to re-election, called the District 204 campaign “a little more contentious than they have been in the past,” and Tyle said, “Elections should be conducted in a different way and that wasn’t the case.”
Price said contrary views can have a great deal of value. But this time around she felt some groups were too strident in their arguments, which led to the hostile tone that shadowed the election.
“I think these are people who feel very strongly about what they believe and people don’t understand and I think they’re frustrated by that,” she said. “They firmly believe they are right and they can’t understand why people would disagree with that.”
Political labels
In Illinois, school board elections are supposed to be non-partisan. But that meant nothing to bloggers, who were not shy about using political labels.
One Web site called the District 203 election results a “left-wing Democratic takeover of the school board” and referred to Price as a “tax-and-spend liberal Democrat.” Another criticized the Taxpayers Ticket for having a “hidden social agenda that is far too conservative for the moderate residents of this district.”
One Web poster wrote, “the Republicans were trounced in November and the same will happen in April.”
“It’s extremely partisan and a person’s ideology is what made this election so contentious,” Davitt said. “The bottom line is you had two ideologies, conservative ideology and a liberal ideology and that’s why people became so emotional … it was about education in a conservative fashion or a liberal fashion.”
Looking to the future
How the April elections will affect the new boards or future elections remains to be seen.
Price is concerned the hostility could discourage people from running.
“People who are smart and engaged are not going to want to get attacked and that’s my concern about this, that the people we want to run on the board, whatever position they’re going to take … are not going to want to do it,” she said.
District 204 challenger Leanne Lyons said she’ll never seek public office again and believes her livelihood was threatened by things written about her on some message boards. She blamed her defeat on a Daily Herald columnist who directed readers to a message board that criticized her candidacy.
“Once somebody of any credibility plants a seed of doubt and after that was done, it was almost impossible to rebound,” Lyons said.
The National School Boards Association’s Felton said time usually is the greatest factor in soothing the pains of a contentious election, but also suggests board members and superintendents should take responsibility for charting the path back to a focus on education.
“The superintendent and board leadership need to lay out a plan to rebuild the confidence of the community and the relationships in the community,” he said. “They should focus on an issue that is important to the education of the district’s students.”
District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis said mending fences is an ongoing part of the job.
“As a superintendent, I’m always trying to be someone who moves the district forward and builds as much consensus as possible,” he said.
Name-calling aside, he was happy to see people passionately debating the issues.
“(But) you have to do that in a respectful manner,” he said. “On some occasions people … weren’t as respectful as they could have been, but it’s a very important debate and I’m glad people engaged in it.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dailyherald.com
