Running
against the NJEA odds
Teacher looks to head union he
feels jilted by
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 • BY JOHN MOONEY •
Star-Ledger Staff
Against the advice of his local and
statewide unions, Andrew Policastro took on Tenafly High
School, claiming his free speech rights as a teacher were
violated when administrators pulled a flier from faculty
mailboxes.
Without a lawyer, the science teacher
argued the case all the way to federal court, and this month
his position was reaffirmed by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Now, Policastro has taken on what some
might argue are even bigger odds, launching a bid to be
president of the New Jersey Education Association. The same
powerful teachers' union that he said turned its back on him
two years ago.
The 39-year-old teacher concedes his
chances are slim in the mail-in election that ends next
month, going against a widely known candidate who
practically has been groomed for the job. With ballots
mailed out this week and due back in early May, his campaign
machine is little more than an active e-mail server and
about $1,200 of his own money.
But Policastro has faced long odds before
in his unlikely court case, so he figures why not spread the
word and see who listens?
"What's next for teachers?" asked the
Nutley native now living in Tenafly. "Are we going to be
like Texas, where they can't even talk about union issues
during the school day? Our freedom of speech has been thrown
in the garbage."
The presidency of the NJEA, the state's
largest union with 190,000 members, pays more than $160,000
a year. The full-time position heads the union's executive
committee and serves as the union's chief spokesman and
policy-maker.
The biannual elections of its officers,
though, have recently been pretty tame. The current
president, Edithe Fulton, easily won the post in the last
two elections. She also was president in the early
1980s.
Her vice president, Joyce Powell, has
been the presumed successor, climbing from the leadership of
her local to statewide secretary-treasurer and then second
in command for the past four years.
With more than 30 years in public schools
as a special education teacher in Vineland, the 53-year-old
Powell takes the traditional line in union campaigns. Her
priorities include finding solutions to the state's
perennial school funding questions and protecting her
members' pensions and benefits.
"I think we have a lot of tough
challenges ahead of us as a state in how we fund our
schools," Powell said. "The priority is to figure out an
equitable funding and revenue stream that will help provide
our children a quality education."
Before that, though, she has to win
against Policastro, a man she said she's met only a few
times at the occasional forum. "Honestly, I don't know much
about him," Powell said.
It's not from Policastro's lack of
trying, as he has traveled to 15 counties in recent months.
He quickly recites plans to protect pension contributions
and "cost of living adjustments."
But he also hands out the eight-page
federal court opinion with his campaign flier, and when
providing a quote for a recent NJEA newsletter, he pulled
one from the opinion itself.
"It doesn't take long for people to start
listening to me when they hear a federal court has said
teachers don't have free speech," he said.
The case appears a pretty simple one. On
the eve of a contract vote in Tenafly in 2002, Policastro
was among a dozen teachers who signed a memo to fellow
teachers that was titled "Questions for the Tenafly
Negotiation Team."
One of the questions was whether the
teachers should have more time to review a contract before
they have to vote on it.
But the memos were removed from the
mailboxes by order of the school's principal, according to
the court documents, and removed again when a fellow teacher
tried to replace them. Eventually the mail room was locked
for the day.
The school argued that it can control
what goes into internal mailboxes. Policastro claimed
otherwise and appealed to his local union and then the NJEA
for help. The NJEA had four lawyers look at his case,
including the national union's chief counsel, and all
advised against proceeding with it.
"While we wish him well, we gave him the
very best advice we could," said Steve Wollmer, a NJEA
spokesman. "We get many requests from members, and we can't
file suit on everything."
But Policastro took his complaint to
federal court anyway, relying on what he had learned in a
graduate-level law course. He first lost in district court
but won on appeal last year before the appellate panel,
which in a strongly worded opinion sent the case back to the
initial federal judge.
The appeals court this month reaffirmed
that decision in declining Tenafly's request to review the
opinion again.
Though Policastro says preserving the
free speech of teachers is "probably the most important
issue there is," Powell is not so sure about
that.
She said she has rarely heard from
members that their constitutional freedoms are in peril.
"There's not some hue and cry over it," she said.
John Mooney covers education. He may be reached at
jmooney@starledger.com, or (973) 392-1548.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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