Superintendent candidate details ties to La.

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 4, 2009 - UPDATED: 3:18 p.m.

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Family ties to Louisiana are the reason that John Dilworth gave this afternoon to explain why he is applying to become the next superintendent of schools in East Baton Rouge Parish.

Dilworth, of Montgomery, Ala., is the third of three finalists who’ve come to Baton Rouge for interviews this week seeking to replace retiring Superintendent Charlotte Placide.

This morning, John Covington, of Pueblo City, Colo., withdrew as one of the finalists for the superintendent’s post here. He interviewed with the School Board on Monday.

Speaking to about 30 local business and community leaders in Baton Rouge over lunch today, Dilworth, a Louisiana native, said he has thought hard about coming back to the Pelican state since his wife became ill — he wouldn’t describe the illness.

Dilworth said he has extended family in the Shreveport area, where he worked for several years, as well as in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

He said he moved to Montgomery two years ago not knowing anyone and has made many close friends, whom he is loath to leave.

“But friends are friends, and family is family,” he said.

Montgomery civic leaders aren’t giving up without a fight. A committee of the Montgomery County School Board on Monday recommended giving Dilworth a 4 percent raise if he would stay in Alabama’s capitol city for three more years, through 2013. The local business community added a sweetener of $150,000 extra in private money if he’d stay.

“I’d rather them make an effort to keep me than to show me to the door,” Dilworth said.

Dilworth, however, said that the fit in Baton Rouge has to be right or it would be a mistake to hire him. He said he’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, including himself, if he’s to do the job right and he needs to be sure that the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board understands that.

“If I’m not the right person, you better keep looking,” Dilworth said.

The other finalist for the East Baton Rouge Parish superintendent job is Bonita Coleman-Potter, of Jackson, Miss. She interviewed with the parish School Board on Tuesday.