Worthington seeks four more years from voters for school board
Polk County Board of Education incumbent Scottie Worthington is hoping voters will give her a few more years in the district 3 seat to see a program of district programs designed to bring improvements to local students.
Worthington, a retired educator who taught both in Polk and surrounding counties, said that despite her opponent J.P. Foster's claims otherwise, Polk School District has made great strides over the past four years. She said educators deserve the credit for improvements, along with new ideas brought by retiring superintendent William Hunter.
"Whether you like (William) Al
Hunter or you don't like Al Hunter, he has done some very positive things for this school system," she said. "He's gotten us in excellent financial shape as far as the school system goes for the taxpayers of this county. Those things, even though people want to argue with because for some reason people think he's taking the bank with him. That's not going to happen. Polk School District is in better financial shape now that we've been in a long, long time."
Among the areas that she said have seen improvement during an Oct. 28 inteview include a growth in the graduation rate, getting students out of mobile classrooms through use of the 2014 Special Purpose, Local Option Sales Tax for a building program and the development of a College and Career Academy, among other programs.
All while the Board of Education is giving money back to taxpayers, Worthington said.
Though she does point out there's still a lot of work to be done on the building program, especially with an upcoming SPLOST package to be put before voters in 2017.
Worthington did address the two biggest issues in the campaign since Foster got into the race back during the summer as an independent candidate: teacher retention and the immediate hiring of Hunter's replacement for superintendent, Cedartown High School principal Darrell Wetherington.
In regards to the teacher retention rate, she said the numbers are no better or worse than those surrounding city and county school systems around Polk County.
She pointed to numbers available in a Letter to the Editor from Harold McDurmon submitted to the Standard Journal as added numerical support for her argument. However, the biggest reason why teacher retention might be a problem has more to do with retirement savings than anything else.
It began with a decision made in the early 1980s that allowed teachers in Polk School District to pull out of making monthly contributions to social security off their checks. If they did opt out of the program, the school system gave teachers 6 percent to invest on their own instead of making the contributions.
Teachers had the option to opt out of making contributions to the social security system decades ago, with the consequence the 6 percent a year extra they got on their paychecks likely went uninvested into retirement, Worthington said.
"Polk County gave them an extra 6 percent, and they were supposed to invest that money wisely so they would have something for retirement," Worthington said. "That is a problem for some people because they've not taken that money and invested it like they should have. So they don't have any social security. So they say ' oh my word' and pull out and go to Floyd, or Bartow, and go for the last five years so they can be invested in the social security system."
Worthington said "I agree there are some teachers that are doing that, but I don't know if that's the whole issue surrounding teacher retention."
She said she left the system many years ago before the issue started because "I knew I wasn't disciplined enough if they gave me that money" to invest it at the time.
As far as the decision to hire Wetherington is concerned, her only regret is that she feels that the process might have been handled better but that she stands by her vote.
"I wish I could unring that bell," Worthington said. "We made that decision, and I stand by that decision... looking back I've seen the process has made so many people angry that maybe should have done things a little differently. However, it's done and its over. I think Dr. Wetherington will be an exceptional superintendent. We can continue to beat that dead horse, but that was the way it was done."
Worthington also pointed out it wasn't the first time the school board had voted to approve a superintendent before.
It also didn't help, said McDurmon, that there were five openings at the time for superintendent around the state and that finding a candidate would be difficult.
"We knew what we had in Dr. Wetherington," he said.