For Marchs Teacher Of The Month Well Come Surprise Them: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the March teacher ballot is and who stands behind it

KDBN is a Colorado radio station that broadcasts as 95 Rock and publishes its news, contests and education coverage at 95rockfm.com. One of the station's recurring features is March's Teacher of the Month, presented under the banner "We'll Come Surprise Them". The format is exactly what the title promises: the station's page states, "Every month we surprise our Teacher of the Month with a whole bunch of prizes," and invites readers to "Vote for March's Teacher of the Month and we'll come and surprise them."

The prize package behind the surprise is built from local sponsors. The winning teacher receives a $50 voucher for Village Inn, a $50 Visa voucher from Farmers Insurance through the Josh DeWitt Agency, a $20 Starbucks voucher, and an insulated tumbler. Those are the items the station's page names, and they give the ballot a distinctly local flavor: the sponsors are businesses a Colorado household would recognize from ordinary weekly life rather than national award brands.

The vote runs on the organizer's own domain, with no outside balloting platform in between. The station files the program under its Colorado News, Contests and Education categories, which places it alongside the station's regular coverage rather than in a separate contest portal. No city is attached to the program's own page, so the ballot reads as a station-wide feature for Colorado listeners rather than a single-town promotion.

The dated record: which years the ballot has run and when the window falls

The program has a long and mostly unbroken history on the station's domain. Confirmed editions begin in 2019 and 2020, skip a year, and return in 2022. From there the ballot runs in 2023, again in 2024, again in 2025, and once more in 2026. No explanation is printed for the missing 2021 entry, so the honest reading is simply that no 2021 edition appears in the program's published trail. Everything from 2022 onward runs year after year, which is what makes the ballot a fixture rather than a one-season experiment.

The voting phase sits inside March. The program's own name anchors it to the month, and the station's page frames it as the March edition of a monthly surprise series, so the window and the calendar month are the same thing here. No exact opening day or closing day within that month appears anywhere on the published page, and no nomination or entry round is dated either; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Two further scheduling facts are missing from the published page. The station lists no round dates for the ballot's own platform, and it prints no statement about when each month's winner is surprised or announced. Because the series repeats monthly, the March cycle is one stop in a rolling calendar, and 2026 is the latest year with a confirmed edition, with the pattern pointing toward a further cycle in 2027.

For a supporter planning a campaign, the practical takeaway is that the month is certain and the days are not. Anyone organizing votes for a specific teacher should treat the live page as the schedule of note, because the station refreshes the ballot with each monthly cycle and may adjust the window without a separate announcement.

How a supporter votes on the live ballot today

The format is kept simple, because the audience is a radio station's general listenership rather than a specialist voting crowd. A supporter opens the March's Teacher of the Month page on 95rockfm.com, the same domain that carries the station's news desk and its other contest listings. The ballot sits there under the station's Contests and Education categories, next to the coverage Colorado readers already browse.

On the page itself, the supporter backs the teacher they want to win the March cycle and submits the vote through the station's form. There is no third-party platform, no separate registration step described on the page, and no round structure printed alongside the ballot. The vote goes straight from the supporter to the station's own system, which is why the station can fold the result directly into its surprise visit.

What happens next is the part that separates this ballot from a generic online poll. The winning teacher does not just appear on a results list; the station arrives in person with the sponsor package, the visit becomes a story on 95rockfm.com, and the teacher's students and colleagues see the recognition play out publicly. That payoff is the reason the program has held a place on the station's calendar across so many years.

Because the series runs monthly, the ballot a supporter sees today is the cycle that is currently live, and it refreshes when the next month's edition opens. The page carries no rule about repeat voting, so any ceiling on how often one person may take part would appear on the form itself for a given cycle.

Where this ballot sits among Colorado's voting programs

Public-vote programs are plentiful across Colorado, and this ballot occupies a niche the big readers-poll franchises do not touch. The state's best-of lists, such as Best of Denver, Top of the Town, Best of NOCO, Best of the Springs, Best of Summit County and Best of the Boat, all sweep broad categories of local businesses under a single annual vote. This program instead concentrates on one person, one month, one prize package.

That difference changes who shows up to vote. A readers-poll ballot draws shoppers ranking dozens of categories, while the teacher ballot draws a school community: parents, students, fellow teachers and former pupils with a personal reason to return daily if the form allows it. The support base is smaller but far more motivated, which is why a teacher with an organized group behind them tends to dominate a cycle.

The host also matters. Every sibling program above runs on a publication's contest platform with its own rules and round structure, while this ballot sits on KDBN's own domain with no separate platform layer. A supporter moving between the two types should not assume the rules carry over, because the station's page prints no cap, no eligibility text and no round dates at all.

For a Colorado teacher or a school community deciding where to invest effort, the choice is between breadth and depth. The best-of franchises offer statewide visibility across a whole year; the teacher ballot offers a surprise visit, a sponsor package and a news story on a station domain that local families already read.

Strengthening a teacher's support in this ballot

Because the vote runs on a plain form the station maintains itself, support here is won by mobilizing people, not by mastering a complicated platform. The natural base is the school itself: class parents, the staff room, the families who know the teacher from years past. A short message carrying the direct link to the 95rockfm.com ballot page does more than any general appeal, since each additional step a supporter must take before reaching the form costs votes in a small-electorate contest.

Timing counts for more here than it does in a statewide poll. The window sits inside March and the station has printed no daily-vote rule, so a campaign that spreads its reminders across the month, rather than saving them for a final push, stays safe whatever the form's limits turn out to be. KDBN publishes no stated position on outside voting help on this ballot, which makes restraint the sensible default.

For tactics that transfer to any public vote, including how to build a reminder rhythm and reach the right supporters, see our guide to getting more votes online.