Village Academy gets principal from Belle Glade
Village Academy gets principal from Belle Glade
By LOIS K. SOLOMON
Sun-Sentinel
Web-posted:
12:16 a.m. Mar. 21, 2001
After a three-month search, the Palm Beach
County School District has found a principal for Village Academy,
the new elementary school for Delray Beach's southwest
neighborhood.
Gale Fulford, principal of Glade
View Elementary School in Belle Glade, begins her new job on April
2, if the School Board approves her selection at its next meeting
later this month.
"I love the fact that there
is now a whole community of children educated right where they
live," Fulford said Tuesday. "I want to work closely with the
community and the teachers, find out where their strengths are and
what their needs are."
Fulford replaces Barbara
Brown, who resigned in December for health reasons. She agreed to
stay on until a new principal was
found.
Village Academy opened in August with
about 200 students in kindergarten, first and second grades. The
school will add third grade next year, and plans to continue adding
grades each year through high school.
Most of
the students had been bused to Boca Raton to racially balance that
area's predominantly white schools. But residents of the
predominantly black neighborhood in southwest Delray Beach lobbied
the school district for their own school and succeeded with the help
of more than $1 million in private money. The school hopes to
resolve some of the poverty-related problems of the neighborhood,
such as a 30 percent high-school graduation rate, through rigorous
academics.
The students attend from 8 a.m. to
5:30 p.m. each day and can also attend on weekends and holidays. The
intensive schedule, along with the difficulty in teaching some of
the students, spurred five teachers to quit in the school's first
two months.
But no staff members have quit
since then, and school founder Chuck Ridley said he expects Fulford
to contribute to the school's stability.
"After
meeting Gale, it became clear she had every skill set needed for us
to do well on the FCAT in 2004," the first time Village Academy
students will take the state exam, Ridley said. "She will lead us to
becoming an A-rated school."
The Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test is one of the main components the
state uses to grade schools.
Ridley said he was
impressed that Fulford started several programs at Glade View that
have been organized at Village Academy, including after-school care
for children, classes to teach parents to use computers and social
workers brought to the school to help
families.
Fulford has been principal at Glade
View for six years. She also has taught at three elementary schools
in Palm Beach County and worked for the school district as a reading
specialist.
Lawanda Brown, a first-grade
teacher at Village Academy, said she hopes Fulford supports the
school's philosophy of developing not only academic but social and
emotional skills of children.
"I would want her
to continue the emphasis on the whole child," she said.
Lois Solomon can be reached at
lsolomon@sun-sentinel.com or
561-243-6536.
Copyright 2000, Sun-Sentinel Co. & South Florida Interactive, Inc.
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