MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — The Baldwin County School District employees say they are forever changed by the passion and work of Ola Scott-Little. On Saturday, she died from cancer.
She was the district’s only social worker for 24 years.
“She was really a huge, huge beacon of light in our school system and our community,” said Pam Longino, Baldwin High’s media specialist and Scott-Little’s neighbor and friend. “That was her passion and her love. It wasn't a job to her, it was her heart."
Grief, abuse, homelessness, neglect– there was nothing Scott- Little couldn’t handle when it came to supporting students.
“Ola was just that person that never let a kid fall through the cracks,” Longino said. “She treated them with dignity, respect, and so much compassion."
Scott was the school's homeless liaison. Longino says she remembers Scott-Little handling cases of hungry kids.
“With me being the library, we have to charge fines for late books or lost books, and she made sure those fines were cleared so that parents and students didn’t have to worry about that,” Longino remembered.
She also did a lot as a mother and wife.
“She was not going to miss a moment with her child,” Janet Cavin said.
She’s the Executive Director of Communities of Schools of Baldwin County and Milledgeville.
She worked closely with Scott-Little and were friends.
“She was the kind of mother people would aspire to be. She was at everything, they were always going and doing, from Girl Scouts, to dance,” Cavin explained. “If you saw Ola, you saw her daughter, and that always struck me because she had a very stressful job. She’d work 50-60 hours and she’d always be excited to make time for her daughter.”
She also meant a lot as a friend.
“She and I would have these conversations before I would go to my workstation,” said Shonya Mapp– the district’s family engagement coordinator, who knew Little-Scott before they worked for the district. “Just not being able to talk with her is a very sad moment.”
Scott-Little passed away Saturday after battling cancer.
However, her friends say she leaves a lot behind by the way she lived life.
“We lost a colleague, we lost a peer, we lost someone everybody counted on, but it was also losing the friend,” Cavin said. “Ola was the kind of person who lived in the moment and gave 100% to everything that she did. Her impact in this community is going to go for a really long time."
Mapp says time must move on, but knows the district has big shoes to fill.
“She valued making sure our students were taken care of. One of the things that she always talked about was that small victories can make a big positive,” Mapp explained.
Longino says the district is forever changed in a big way by Ola Scott-Little.
“Treat others like you want to be treated and just love like it's your last day. She always did that. She loved and she gave like it was her last day,” Longino said. “I just hope everyone takes away, too, the giving heart that she had and the things she did for our community because she really did reach out and help a lot of students who could've easily fallen through the cracks. We'll replace, or we'll have somebody else in, but I just know that her memory will never be forgotten because of the big heart she has.”
Scott-Little was selected as Georgia's school social worker of the year for District 10 in 2022.
The district says she was instrumental in helping raise the graduation rate in the district by visiting kids in their homes and helping them return to school.