Thursday, March 3, 2016

Good news for schools in Lake Worth from PBC School Superintendent Robert Avossa (and let's rally for Erica!)

[The blog post below is from  February 21st. The latest is Palm Beach County School Board member Erica Whitfield's video (below) is only NINE VIEWS AWAY from being the 4th most viewed ever on my YouTube channel (link below) and only 93 views from becoming #3! Continue reading and spread the word about this video to your friends, family, and neighbors. Rally for Erica!]

The Post's Andrew Marra has very good news titled, "Avossa to cut 58 jobs, direct $5 million more to poorest schools" from last Wednesday (2/17); you can read the entire article using this link. This is very good news for the City of Lake Worth and if you want to know why watch the video below of School Board member Erica Whitfield with a presentation given to the Lake Worth City Commission on December 8th. That video is now the 5th most viewed video ever on my YouTube channel and moving up fast.

Here are two excerpts from Marra's article:
     Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Robert Avossa wants to steer an extra $4.5 million a year to the county’s poorest public schools by slashing nearly 60 jobs in the school district’s administrative bureaucracy.
     In a plan announced Wednesday, Avossa called for the elimination of 58 positions in the school district’s regional offices, reducing their staffs by more than half and eliminating what he called “redundancy built into the system.” [emphasis added]
     The resulting savings then will be shifted to the schools with the poorest student populations, where principals will have greater discretion to use the money to tackle their schools’ particular needs, Avossa said.
[and. . .]
     Board members endorsed the plan as a necessary reform. Board member Debra Robinson voted against the restructuring because of an unrelated objection to the location of the department that investigates employee complaints in the district’s chain of command.
     “It really does feel like all the things that we talked about are coming to fruition,” board member Erica Whitfield said.
Now about the video of Erica Whitfield. Many of my videos only get a few views since they're of a particular subject that only interest a few people but they're still important. The City of Lake Worth's meetings are available online but it's difficult to find where a discussion begins if you don't know the agenda. My videos are available, subject by subject, and that's either good or bad depending on your point of view.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed the video of Whitfield going from only a few views to hundreds over just a few days! Each day the views continued to climb and now the count is at 1,778. The one point that interested me is how confused the PBC School District is about the City of Lake Worth and all the schools that are outside the City in suburban Lake Worth, or unincorporated Palm Beach County. You'll hear that at about the 1:00 mark in the video.

The public schools in the City of Lake Worth have many challenges that other schools in western PBC do not. That is no secret and Whitfield addresses that. You'll also hear about members of the City Commission who are working closely with Whitfield to address problems in Lake Worth's schools. It's very good news more help will be coming to our public schools. Without further ado, the video: