Monetary incentives considered for retiring teachers

By BRIAN LANGLEY

Morgan County News

    The final Morgan County School Board workshop of 2008 took place Monday evening and lasted only 22 minutes.

    Despite such a short meeting, it was very beneficial with a teacher retirement incentive highlighting the talk of the workshop.

    Margaret Morgan, representing the Morgan County Education Associ-ation, presented the board with the figures of teachers that are close to retiring and the amount of sick days they have accumulated. The option that is being discussed is teachers being paid up to 200 sick days at $50 per day. That would allow a retired teacher with 200 sick days to get paid $10,000.

    "We are very excited about talking about it at the bargaining table in January," commented Morgan at the workshop.

    Thirty-eight teachers in Morgan County are currently either eligible to retire or have 29 years of service.

    During the workshop, board member Randy Harlan asked Morgan if she knew how many systems are doing this. "Just about every system around has this in place. It is a good incentive," Morgan replied.

    The Morgan County School Board will meet on Jan. 5, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. at the Morgan County Central Office. The next workshop will be held at Petros-Joyner School at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2009.