UPDATE: Pugh tracks down squeegee boy
NEW VIDEO shows the mayor at his school, encouraging him to sign up for Baltimore’s Youth Works summer jobs program
Above: Mayor Catherine Pugh at Booker T. Washington Middle School with the boy she saw squeegee-ing on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (YouTube)
After releasing a video showing her scolding a boy for standing at an intersection with a squeegee during school hours, Mayor Catherine Pugh has released a second video showing her visiting the boy’s school.
“Alright, let’s talk for a minute,” she says in the new video, released last night, putting her arm around his shoulder.
“You doing alright?”
It was a stark contrast to the first “Behind the Scenes” video, meant to represent her activities on January 11, which included telling the boy she encountered while driving to a meeting to “Go to school! NOW!”
The new video is designed to depict Pugh’s activities on January 12.
It shows Pugh deciding to go check on the boy at his school, Booker T. Washington Middle School.
She notes that she not only encountered him the previous morning, but that she also spotted him at 9:30 p.m. at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
“I was concerned because, a) he was sitting in the side of the street in the dark eating, and I told him to get in the truck, I was going to take him home,” Pugh says to the camera. “He said his mother was down the street. I didn’t see her, but I was really concerned.”
At the school on Friday, she tells a staffer, presumably the principal, about her two encounters with the boy.
Summoned, the boy comes out, and the mayor says, “I’m checking on you. I told you I was going to check on you yesterday.”
She tells the principal to make sure that the boy signs up for the Youth Works summer jobs program.
And she also brings up Squeegee Corps, her summer initiative for youngsters who wash car windows for tips. (Participants washed windows at “pop-up” car washes and attended workshops on financial literacy, sales skills and other subjects.)
“They’re going to sign him up for [Youth Works], but we gotta make sure he gets into Squeegee Corps or something,” Pugh says to an assistant. “Cause he needs to make money.”
The video shows Pugh in her car returning to City Hall, noting the time as 1:06 pm.
Pugh decided to go to the boy’s school at 12:54 p.m., according to the video, which would mean the total time for the visit, including driving, was 12 minutes.