UPDATED: Curley School Teacher Mentioned in Speech By President Obama

UPDATE, Friday 10:49 a.m.: According to the Boston Herald, the President did not actually meet Baroz. He was simply in the same room with him.

~~~~~

A literacy and data coach at JP's featured prominently in a presidential press conference this morning.

Robert Baroz, who was a Teaching Ambassador Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education this summer, was mentioned prominently by President Barack Obama in a press conference about the president's jobs bill.

Here's the transcript from the press conference, via The National Journal:

I had a chance to meet a young man named Robert Baroz. He’s an English teacher in Boston who came to the White House a few weeks ago. He’s got two decades of teaching experience, he’s got a Master’s degree, he’s got an outstanding track record of helping his students make huge gains in reading and writing. In the last few years, he’s received three pink slips because of budget cuts. Why wouldn’t we want to pass a bill that puts somebody like Robert back in the classroom teaching our kids?

The Boston Public Schools say they were, in the end, able to keep Baroz employed each time he got pink-slipped.

"Using stimulus funds and an allocation from the 2010 Congressional Jobs Bill, BPS has been able to save Mr. Baroz’s job three years in a row despite budget pressures from higher teacher salaries and increased health care and transportation costs," the district said in a press release.