Her new team, as outlined Thursday night during a presentation on the academic turnaround plan that began Friday morning at Northside High, is hundreds strong and includes Northside students, teachers, faculty, parents, alumni and any other stakeholder who’s ready to join her in an excited effort to turn around the discipline and performance problems that have long plagued the north Lafayette high school.
“This is a group effort ... I need you, we need you, to come together,” Voorhies told an enthusiastic audience of about 100 people who crowded the Northside’s cafeteria to hear what’s in store for the school. “I met with faculty today, and we're changing all kinds of things around here. Are all of them on board yet? No. But it’s time to sit down and buckle you seat belt. You’re in for one hell of a ride. This is hardball. I don’t know how else to say it.”
Voorhies, a retired school administrator (and former basketball coach) who lives in Lafayette Parish and most recently led the turnaround of Park Valley school in East Baton Rouge Parish, was chosen by Lafayette Parish School System Superintendent Pat Cooper and subsequently approved by the school board to lead his Northside academic rebound “SWAT” team, a group of veteran educators that also includes Garrick Johnson (also of Park Valley), former N.P. Moss Annex Principal Sandra Billeaudeau and several other key personnel additions to oversee the pilot turnaround project.
The turnaround plan also calls for more than $2 million in repairs and renovations to the school.
Discipline policies will see vast changes, Voorhies warns, starting as early as Friday morning when “we’re going to be everywhere in this school.”
Her goal, she says, is to have the discipline issues under control in two and a half weeks.
An already passionate Voorhies became even more animated Thursday night when Northside High School alum Jennifer Jackson explained that many in attendance aren’t parents of Northside students, but alumni and north Lafayette community members who are ready and willing to step up and help.
“What do you need from us?” she asked Voorhies.
“We need mentors,” Voorhies responded. “For both our young men and our young women. I need you time ... and your physical presence.”
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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