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Superintendent Candidates Face Off
10/23/08 - 09:12 PM
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The election is 12 days away, but voters are still choosing candidates.  The three Bay District Superintendent candidates faced off again Thursday night at Gulf Coast Community College.  This time the questions came from their peers - educators in Bay County.

Candidates Steve George, Bill Husfelt, and incumbent James McCalister spoke about how they each plan to increase the salary scale for teachers and support personnel.

“We’ve got to be smarter at the business approaches.  We do great things in the classroom.  We do wonderful things for students.  It’s outside the classroom where we need to think outside the box.  We need to get better because until we do that we’ll never be able to pay our employees what they deserve.  I don’t care if you’re support employee, a teacher, or administrator,” Husfelt said.

“Without these teachers and without their tutelage our children are not going to succeed.  We need to make sure they are supported.  We need to find places in that budget to cut, and we need to find things in there to send teachers way because our teachers are underpaid.  It’s not my opinion.  You can look at it on national statistics, on Florida stats from the governors office.  We have to do better than that,” said George.

“The person who has been the champion for raising the salaries for our employees has been James McCalister.  For the past 8 years we have increased it.  Now I’m going to give you a statistic.  It’s still not what I want it to be, but there’s been 30% in salary increases,” McCalister said.

The candidates will face another round of questions Friday morning, but this time from high school seniors.  The Rutherford High School Communications Technology Academy senior government class will be hosting a superintendent’s forum Friday morning at 7:45 in the school’s auditorium.