Vineland
educator elected to lead top teachers
union
Friday, May 13, 2005 • BY JOHN
MOONEY • Star-Ledger Staff
Joyce Powell, a special education teacher
from Vineland and a long-time officer with the New Jersey
Education Association, was easily elected president of the
state's largest teachers union.
Powell will begin the two-year term in
September after winning more than 70 percent of the mail-in
ballots, or about 20,000 votes overall, according to the
union. Challenger Andrew Policastro, a Tenafly High School
science teacher, won 29 percent or about 9,000
votes.
The 54-year-old Penns Grove resident has
been the union's vice president for the last four years and
was its treasurer-secretary before that. She succeeds Edithe
Fulton, who had been president since 2001.
Powell said yesterday her priorities
would include helping the state find ways to ease its
reliance on property taxes to fund schools and to assist in
devising new professional development requirements for
teachers.
"If I have a strength, it is partnering
with others to put forward a pro-education agenda," she
said.
Powell said she would not bend on
protecting teachers' pensions and health benefits, a recent
political target. "Those things are sacred, and I think the
public would agree we have earned those benefits," she
said.
Policastro tried to make teachers'
free-speech rights a central issue of the election. He is
best known for challenging in federal court his own high
school principal for removing from faculty mailboxes a
critical memo that he and other teachers had signed.
Representing himself, Policastro so far has prevailed in the
court case.
He said his broader fight would not end
with his defeat: "I am fighting alone for the First
Amendment rights of all NJEA members, including the 150,000
who chose not to vote."
Also elected were Barbara Keshishian of
New Milford as vice president and Wendell Steinhauer of
Riverside, Burlington County, as
secretary-treasurer.
The union represents 190,000 active and
retired public school teachers and staff.
© 2005 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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