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8/14/02
Shotwell
likes direction of Macon schools
By
Beth Seay
Dr. Rodney
Shotwell has been superintendent in Macon County for just over a year,
but he speaks like someone long familiar with the Macon County school
system and like someone fully committed to the educational process.
“It’s our nature – it’s mission work, what we
do ... you really have to like kids, and you want them to get turned
on to knowledge,” Shotwell said in an interview Monday.
The superintendent speaks highly of the school system in Macon County.
“People here in Macon County demand a lot out of their children
– and that’s a good thing. That’s a good issue to
have to deal with.”
He said the new school year started out smoothly. “It’s
kind of scary, in a way. Maybe it just seems smoother because I have
another year under my belt. But the teachers hit the ground running,
and the kids came in really eager to learn.”
The start of the school year and the work of educators was sidetracked
for a few days after news stories surfaced about school board members
and their travel expenses. A local watchdog group, The Concerned Citizens
of Macon County, released information earlier this month regarding
their investigation into the travel budget of the school board. The
group revealed that school board members were including their families
in their trips to national conferences, with the county footing the
bill for airfare for the family members. According to reports, the
county paid nearly $5,000 to purchase plane tickets for school board
family members to attend conferences in places like New Orleans and
Orlando over a four-year period. The board’s travel budget for
2001-2002 was $17,585.
Shotwell said that the Board of Education had begun to consider changes
to this policy “at the board retreat in October,” and that
most of the money had been reimbursed to the county before the investigation
was announced.
School board Chairman Kevin Corbin said of the controversy: “We
had a board retreat in October, where we discussed dozens and dozens
of issues,” of which family travel to conferences was one. He
said the board decided to keep travelling to conferences, “but
that we’d no longer include family members, because the board
was now being paid $200 a month.”
“Back in the ‘old days,’ when the board began paying
for family member’s tickets, it was done because board members
received no pay, just $20 a month expense money,” said Corbin.
He confirmed Shotwell’s comment that the money spent on family
tickets had all been reimbursed to the board.
The task at hand
Shotwell said that “academic accountability” is one of
the cornerstones of the Macon school system.
“We’ve made a vast improvement from where we were eight
years ago in terms of how we do on state mandated tests –
though testing’s not everything....” Equally important,
Shotwell said, is the “sense of community” that each school
has.
“The districts that struggle in North Carolina don’t have
that.” At Macon County’s community schools, including
Nantahala and Highlands, which both house grades K-12, “they
are like family. If there’s a crack that even starts, there’s
somebody right there to patch it up, support them, and put them
right back up there.”
And, “of course,” he added, “the teachers. They are
just top notch.” He said the county “must be doing something
right,” to have the fourth-lowest turnover rate in the state’s
117 school districts.
In a growing school system like Macon County’s, school crowding
has been discussed for years. According to Shotwell, the system
has added more than 1,000 kids in the last 11 years, and enrollment
this year is up 50-75 kids from last year. Last year, South Macon
elementary school opened, and last week, the new Cartoogechaye school
replaced the existing one.
“The old Cartoogechaye school had more kids outside than inside,”
Shotwell said wryly, referring to all the mobile units in the yard
at the school.
The openings of these schools, explained Shotwell, greatly eased
overcrowding at East Franklin School, which has also been under
construction in the past year with the renovation of administrative
areas, the media center and cafeteria. Still to come would be Phase
II and III of improvements at East Franklin, including adding eight
more classrooms and roofing improvements, and then the addition
of a gym and two fifth grade classrooms.
“Then that school would be ready to handle 500 kids,”
said Shotwell. Current enrollment at East Franklin is 316. “We
took 100 out when South Macon opened up, and 100 to New Cartoogechaye.”
Other schools in the county have overcrowding problems as well,
and Shotwell said a North Macon elementary school could be a possibility
in the future, serving the Iotla and Cowee districts. He also said
that the needs of middle- and high-school students need to be addressed.
Currently, he said, Macon Middle School has six mobile units in
use. Highlands School, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this
year, is also in need of some improvements, said Shotwell, including
a new gym. “What happens there now with middle school and high
school athletics – you’ve got kids who leave the school
at 10:45 or 11:00 at night, because you can’t get all the practice
times in for all the teams.”
“I’m grateful to Macon County for having a vision of the
future by allowing us to upgrade these schools,” he said.
With all the state budget woes, however, day-to-day functioning
of the system is obviously on the forefront of the superintendent’s
mind. Shotwell said that classroom positions and textbook allocations
have been cut, and discretionary reductions to the tune of $72,000
must be made. He also said that the budget for instructional supplies
could be cut, “which would be a blow, considering we have zero
dollars allocated right now to instructional supplies.”
Shotwell puts his money where his mouth his. This year, he donated
his entire $1,700 raise back to the school system, with $170 going
to each of the county’s 10 schools for instructional supplies.
“It’s just not right for them to have to suffer,”
he said. “When I was coaching basketball, it was nothing for
me to buy two or three pairs of shoes for some of the kids who couldn’t
afford them ....You just do what you do to make things right.”
School board chairman Kevin Corbin said the board was very pleased
with Shotwell’s performance in his first year.
“When we hired him, we set goals for him and for the board.”
Corbin said at the board’s June meeting when they reviewed
the goals.
“ I think we felt he had done a good job. He’d met the
goals we set for him.”
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