Voigt, who has taught at Fairfield Freshman School for 14 years, has been suspended without pay since December and is on the verge of losing his job for allegedly making racially insensitive remarks to a black student who expressed a desire to be president. According to Fairfield school officials, Voigt told the boy, "We don't need another black president."
Voigt has repeatedly denied making that statement, saying he was misquoted. The media firestorm and public outcry that has followed have ruined the 60-year-old math teacher’s reputation and career, he said.
In addition to being suspended, Voigt said he has lost his golf coaching position at Badin High School, which he’s held for six years. He was also not allowed to serve as a basketball referee this year and has not been contacted to be a baseball statistician for the visiting teams the Cincinnati Reds play. He is being treated for depression and has talked with a psychologist, he said.
Voigt said that anyone who “knows me is behind me 100 percent.” But for everyone else, he wants to try to set the record straight.
“I feel I’ve been negatively portrayed in the newspaper and on TV, and it’s time for everybody to hear the other side of the story, which is the true side of the story,” Voigt told the Journal-News during an interview Thursday at his home in Colerain Township.
Voigt, who has been reprimanded by the district in the past for making inappropriate comments to students, is fighting to keep the Fairfield Board of Education from firing him. The board is on record saying Voigt’s current suspension is just the first step in terminating him from the 9,500-student district.
“Our district will not tolerate any employee who belittles or degrades any student in a racially, or otherwise insensitive, or offensive manner,” district officials said in a written statement. “We work hard to teach tolerance and respect of others in our very diverse school district. Mr. Voigt’s behavior is unacceptable and reprehensible.”
Voigt went through a three-day hearing to appeal his suspension earlier this month and could learn his fate by the second week of April when a referee appointed by the state department of education is expected to make a recommendation to the school board. The board must consider the referee’s opinion, but is not bound to follow it.
Voigt, who is five years from retirement and makes $73,566 a year, said he would consider an agreement to let him retire early if the ruling doesn’t go in his favor. If that’s not an option, he would likely appeal his case to Butler County Common Pleas Court.
“Ideally, I want my job back. I love my kids that I teach,” he said.
How it all began
It all began Dec. 3 at about 1:30 p.m. when class was wrapping up for the day at Fairfield Freshman School. A group of students, some of whom were African-American, were having a conversation.
“I hear a bunch of people in the back, and they’re talking about wanting to be president someday … just kind of tongue-in-cheek,” Voigt said. “I said, ‘Well, if you’re going to be president, I hope you’re a good one because we can’t afford another president like (Barack) Obama, black or white.”
Voigt said he was trying to encourage the students and convey to them that “you can be better than what we have right now. You can look at the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.”
But his words were taken out of context, one of the students’ parents complained and Voigt found himself removed from his job — an action by the district he says was “uncalled for.”
“I don’t put down people in a negative way. I always try to pick them up,” Voigt said, adding his remarks weren’t directed at any one student. “That’s my responsibility as a teacher and an educator.”
Voigt said he had even been trying to help the student he was accused of making the insensitive remarks to. That particular student had been failing his class and Voigt said he tried to help him organize his work and notebook.
“If I didn’t care about him…I’d have failed him,” he said. “But I was not interested in failing him; I was interested in trying to get him to pass.”
Voigt claims that during his three-day hearing, the referee asked a student who was testifying why the accusations were made, and the student replied, “Because those boys are lying.”
School officials interviewed 10 students during the district’s investigation of the incident, according to records obtain by the Journal-News. Six weren’t present during the verbal exchange and four backed the accusing student’s account of Voigt’s remarks, the records show.
Past troubles
A Journal-News examination of Voigt’s personnel file found that he had received near top marks on most measurements in his evaluations. But Voigt has also received either verbal or written warnings on four prior occasions for inappropriate actions.
In 2008, he was given a warning for calling a student an “African-American Rudolph.” Voigt admits he did say that, but that he was repeating the phrase another student said first.
In December 2012, he was given another verbal warning for “inappropriate comments to students.” A student was wearing colored hair and mismatched clothes during Spirit Week, and Voigt told the student, “You’re looking weird today.” Voigt was also accused of saying that student was gay, which Voigt denies.
“Can you imagine me calling somebody gay in class? Well, I’d be looking for my pink slip the next day,” he said “I got street sense. Give me a little credit. I would know better than to say things like that.”
Voigt also received warnings for improper use of school technology and failure to use the adopted curriculum in 2008 and 2013, respectively. He also denied wrongdoing in either of those incidents.
Voigt acknowledges the controversies have created a “cloud” around him. And even after all he’s been through with the district, he said he would be willing to teach in Fairfield again.
“I would go back and teach the same way that I teach. …I’ve got a gift for kids — the dream of education, of being better for the next school year,” he said. “I have a lot of kids that come in and talk to me and feel that I’m a good friend to them. I know the way I present myself to kids; I’m respected.”
Before Voigt became a teacher, he was a television sportscaster in Wilmington, N.C. Among his claims to fame are interviews with sports legends Mickey Mantle, Woody Hayes, Sugar Ray Leonard and Michael Jordan, before he became famous.
“In high school, he wasn’t Michael Jordan; he was Mike Jordan,” Voigt said. “Once he got to UNC (University of North Carolina), they increased his name to be Michael Jordan.”
Voigt lost his sportscasting job when the TV station he worked for was bought by another company. He had been doing some coaching also at that time and thought it might be a good idea to go into education.
After starting his career at Lanie High School in the early 1980s, Voigt eventually made his way to Ohio, starting in Fairfield City Schools in 2000.
Not a racist
Voigt said his current situation has made him “more aware of the sensitivity that people have when it comes to some sort of racial comments.” He denied being a racist.
“There is no way that I am a racial person,” Voigt said. “My first baseball coach was an African American. My best friend in high school was an African American. My first roommate in college was an African American. I was the best man at an African-American wedding.”
Voigt said he trying to recast the picture that is being painted of him right now.
It’s “like I’m on a wanted list at the post office, and there’s a bounty for me,” he said. “It’s been the most horrible thing that’s ever happened in my life. … I’m a good guy. I’m a caring guy. I’m a sympathetic person. I will give more than I receive.”
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