Klager Elementary holds mock election

Students entering voting room.

With results closely mirroring the predicted but not the actual outcome of the election, the students at Klager Elementary School chose Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as the new leader of our nation by a narrow margin over Republican Donald Trump by a vote of 162-154.

Second and fourth-grade teachers Mrs. Mary Fielder and Mrs. Kathy O’Mara have been coordinating Klager’s mock elections since 2004, but the tradition at Klager goes back to the late 1980s when retired teacher Mrs. Janice Little and the late Mrs. Teddy Groeb started the elections. In the last election cycle, teacher Amie Armstrong and her class also helped Fielder with the mock election.

Then, as now, “All of the classrooms participated and took turns hosting this event,” Little recalls. “The children were always eager to learn about the election process.

“They would leave school on Election Day and tell their parents the winner. What a fun day!”

This year, Fielder and O’Mara received a grant from Worth Repeating, which helped the school to purchase a special edition of Scholastic News to prepare the students for this special project.

“It takes the kids through the whole process with a leveled booklet,” O’Mara said. “It has been a great resource for us.”

Voting booth.

And the lessons were well learned. Fielder’s second-graders started out as the election officials, and greeted O’Mara’s class at the door with instructions for voting, which included showing their identification, registering to vote, receiving and completing a ballot in booths, and finally placing the ballots in the ballot boxes.

At the end of the day, students were also assigned to count the votes.

Little recalls at least three times that the Klager results matched the actual election outcome. O’Mara wasn’t sure how it’s turned out under her watch, but says that the important thing about it is the learning experience.

And an experience it was. My favorite quote was from a fourth grader who said after casting his ballot, “I feel so … sophisticated.”

That would be worth all the time and effort the teachers and staff put into this project.

While Klager Elementary went for Clinton over Trump, the Manchester Middle School also held a mock election today, and their result differed as reported by Principal Jennifer Mayes, with Trump 170 votes to Clinton 98 votes.

Just as adult voters are required to show photo ID in Michigan, at Klager students had to present their lunch cards to vote.

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by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.