Education

Levy County students have more Advanced Placement options this year than ever before to ready them for college, says Levy County School District Director of Curriculum Patrick Wnek.

“We believe that by providing more AP courses, students will be better prepared for college,” he said.

“Eighty percent of students say they want to go to college,” Wnek said. “In these rural areas – many of them will be first generation. AP courses will prepare them.”

At Tuesday’s Rotary Club meeting, Pam Asbell wanted to clarify two things up front.

“Iee^am not a new principal. Iee^am not new to Williston,” said the recently appointed principal at Williston Middle School.

Asbell, who spent the last three years at Chiefland High School said she, in fact, lived in Williston until her parents moved to Archer when she was 11.

Asbell, an educator for nearly 30 years, fills the void left by retiring principal Ernst L. Kordgien.

An increase of 143 percent in the cost to collect garbage for Williston schools has the Levy County School Board steaming. At Tuesday’s meeting of the board, Superintendent Bob Hastings said the city of Williston had recently stopped providing its own waste pickup service and instead contracted with vendor Emerald Waste Services. In the process, the city had raised the cost to collect trash from Williston’s four school sites from $2,673 per month to $6,555 per month, coming to an annual cost of almost $79,000, an increase of about $46,000 more than last year.

It has come as no surprise that Pam Asbell chose her career path in education.

“I was a great student,” said Asbell, new principal at Williston Middle School. “Iee^loved school. Iee^love learning. This is not a surprising end.”

From those early years both attending, and playing school with friends, Asbell found role models in teachers and worked her way up the educational ladder by starting out as a teacher’s aide.