INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Florida statute prohibits the Indian River County School District from campaigning for a “yes” vote on Tuesday’s $32.7 million ballot initiative, but state elections officials say a robocall sent out to more than 18,000 telephones at dinnertime Thursday to spur voter turnout does not break the law.
Superintendent Dr. Fran Adams recorded the following message in her own voice and programmed it to call every parent, teacher and School District employee at 6:30 p.m. during early voting and just days prior to the Aug. 14 primary election.
The message was entitled, “Welcome Back and Reminder” and lasted roughly 35 seconds.
“Hello, this is Dr. Fran Adams, Indian River County School District Superintendent. I hope that students and staff have had a great summer and I look forward to teachers returning on August 14th and students on August 20th. I would also like to remind you about the .6 Millage Continuation Referendum on the August 14th Primary Ballot. Please remember to vote. If you are interested in further information regarding this referendum, please go to the school district webpage at IndianRiverSchools.org. Thank you for your time.”
On that web page is a prominent blue bar leading to information about the referendum and why the school district needs the additional tax dollars. A flier on the website, even asks the reader, “Are you willing to support?” and “¿Estan dispuestos a apoyar?” on the Spanish-language version.
VeroNews.com and its sister publication, Vero Beach 32963 were alerted about the robocall by a parent of a Vero Beach High School student who said she was less than appreciative to receive what seemed on its face to be a classic, politically motivated get-out-the-vote effort.
The Florida Department of State, Elections Division regulates all things legal and political when it comes to voting in Florida. By Tallahassee standards, the robocall did not specifically violate prohibitions on electioneering by the school district with regard to the referendum.
“Since the message does not expressly advocate, it’s not a ‘political advertisement’ or ‘independent expenditure’,” said state elections spokesman Chris Cates in an email, after consulting with his office’s legal staff.
“It concerns an issue, so it is not an ‘electioneering communication.’ Because it does not indicate support for the referendum, it is not a ‘telephone solicitation’ under the Code. Therefore, from an Election Code standpoint at least, it does not appear to be improper,” Cates said.
But, as school teachers might ask their students, was the call the right thing to do? Will it pass the sniff test of the reasonable person, or the reasonable voter? Or does it flout the spirit and intent of the law?
School Board Chairman Jeff Pegler returned a phone call Friday, but he said he couldn’t weigh in yet because he had not been told about the robocall.
“I actually hadn’t heard about until you called,” Pegler said in a voicemail message Friday evening. “The message didn’t come to School Board members, so I’m trying to get it to listen to it so I can talk to you about it.”
Adams did not personally respond to information requests, but instead asked Executive Director of Instructional and Information Technology Bruce Green to answer some 10 questions emailed to the district.
Green said the robocall came about after a staff development session for administrators on Monday where Adams and other top officials were taught how to use a newly installed upgrade to the automatic call system.
Since better communication with parents is part of Adams’ “High Impact Goals” for the 2012-13 school year, Green said, she saw the robocall system as a dynamic and cost-efficient way to help achieve that.
Green said that he observed Adams on Monday showing School District Attorney Suzanne D’Agresta the printed text, which she intended to read on the call.
He said Adams got D’Agresta’s blessing on the verbiage at that very same training session on Monday where D’Agresta was there to help train administrators about legal issues.
“We don’t always have the text of the calls, but she (Adams) happened to type up the text so she could remember what she wanted to say,” Green said. “She consulted with the attorney. I saw Suzanne D’Agresta review and approve it.”
It doesn’t appear that the call cost anything beyond the investment in the technology to produce and send out the messages. Green said the robocall system, which costs the district about $37,000 per year, does not charge for individual calls – that it’s all inclusive.
He said each of the district schools and various departments take full advantage of the system, that it’s used routinely or even daily by the food service, transportation and attendance personnel.
Many people in the chain of command have access to the system and can record or type a message and send it out to thousands of telephones in the time it takes to send one email, Green said.
Despite having a system in place to make bulk phone calls to parents, this appears to be the first time a district superintendent has used it to welcome students back to school – or urge their parents to vote.
“The superintendent, to the best of my knowledge, did not send out a start of school welcome message last year,” Green said. “Last year it was her first year.”
In fact, Green said a superintendent has never personally recorded a welcome message at the beginning of the school year in the five-plus years the district has had the robocall system, if memory serves him correctly.
He said other personnel, including school principals and lower-level administrators might have done so.
In fact, a few days prior to Adams’ call to parents, teachers and employees, Vero Beach High School Principal Shawn O’Keefe sent out his own welcome message, but O’Keefe’s message did not urge a vote on Aug. 14.
It strictly covered the business of the start of school and orientation schedules.
“It’s very possible that a principal or multiple principals sent out a similar welcome call,” Green said, acknowledging that there is normally little or no coordination of these types of robocalls between the district and the 24 individual schools.
Green said he could not provide a log of occurrences when a superintendent recorded and sent a robocall about any topic in the past.
He cannot, at this time, produce copies of recordings of previous district or school robocalls, or even a record of who sent out which messages to whom, that dates back any earlier than last week because of the massive system upgrade.
He said the district had been told its archives would be preserved, but that they need to be re-inputted into the new system.
Superintendents, Green said, have been involved in calls related to hurricanes and school closings, which is what one might expect the robocall system to be used for on a massive, district-wide level.
He said the school district also sent out a series of three calls this spring to parents asking, and then reminding, them to complete a survey.
It took about 30 minutes for the system to cycle through attempting to make 18,242 telephone calls to the home telephones and cellular phones of parents, teachers and other district employees.
According to Green, about 5,232 people answered the phone and another 5,200 received a recorded voice mail message. The balance were no answers, wrong numbers and hang ups, Green said.
If at least one voting adult at the other end of those 10,432 phones that got the message to get out and vote Tuesday end up heeding Dr. Adams’ advice, that number of votes could affect the primary election.
In August 2008, the last time the Sheriff and other constitutional offices were up for grabs, only 26,824 people or 31 percent of registered voters cast ballots in all of Indian River County, according to public records.
Charlie Wilson has worked with political campaigns, polling, robocalls and advocacy efforts for three decades, two years of that with the Republican National Committee, and he’s run for county office a few times himself and served briefly on the Vero Beach City Council.
His company, Media Arts Group, provides consulting and communications services to many of the local candidates for municipal, county and legislative office.
Even Wilson, who is well-known for challenging the wording and meaning of election regulations, said the robocalls skirted “very close” to the line, in his opinion.
“What they did was probably legal, but it’s pushing the edge of the intent of the law,” Wilson said. “It’s the intent of the law that an entity like the school district should not use its perceived credibility to influence the vote on the referendum.”
“They did not advocate for the parents and employees receiving the calls to vote one way or the other, but it was obviously an effort to stimulate voter turnout amongst a group of people who might tend to vote yes on the referendum,” Wilson said.
Wilson said another question to be asked is whether or not the contact information — home telephone numbers and cellular phone numbers — which were provided to the school district for emergency contact or official correspondence purposes — was provided to receive a robocall urging them to vote on Tuesday.
“Whether or not some of the parents might take issue with that from a privacy perspective, I don’t know,” Wilson said.
Utility activist Glenn Heran ran a political action committee, Citizens for a Brighter Future, last fall and serves as president of the Taxpayers Association of Indian River County.
The Taxpayers Association of Indian River County has come out against the School District’s .60-millage referendum.
He said when he ran the PAC, he was careful to err on the side of caution with regard to what he was legally allowed to do and say.
He said the School District would have been better served to avoid even the appearance of electioneering with school district resources.
“The timing is just awful,” he said. “If they wanted to avoid the perception that they’re trying to influence voting on the referendum, they should have waited and did their reminder call after the election.”
Heran also said he has a problem with the use of taxpayer-funded school resources to send out a recording which included any language about the referendum, calling it, “a completely inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.”
“They sent out a call to parents of public school kids who, of course would want to get as much funding as possible for their kids’ schools because they are the beneficiaries of the increased taxes,” he said. “And they sent it to all the employees because these are the people whose very jobs may be on the line if the referendum fails.”
Heran said the robocall was over the top, when combined with the other communications efforts conducted by the district – which were also legal – to educate the public about the referendum.
“They held a meeting, they sent out a mailer with a picture with kids with their hands raised and to me that said, raise your hand if you vote yes,” he said. “It’s transparent what they’re trying to do here.”
