My name is Heidi Knable. I have been a teacher at Redmond Jr. High for 10 years now. Through those years, and the 10 years teaching at the Middle Level in Everett, I have worked with many secretaries and support personnel. I have also seen the responsibilities of those administrative jobs grow and change tremendously. To put it bluntly, our secretaries run the school! Without them, we are really lost (as we saw the other day).
Our previous head secretary had to leave our school, the home that she knew and loved for years, because she literally could not afford to live! She is now working in the private sector and earning double the salary she worked so hard for before! When the list of applicants for her position was narrowed down to the final one, the successful candidate quit after just two days because the work was just too much and the pay was too little!
While our economy is struggling and the world is changing, so are the demands of these secretaries. What used to be thought of as a part time job for a wife to stay busy, is now a full time position for a single head of household. The responsibilities of simple dictation, making coffee and looking pretty have moved on to building and personnel management, budgeting, payroll, purchasing, dealing with emergency health issues for students, parent conflicts, confidential counseling issues, registration, computer systems analysis, database management, and on, and on! Many of the secretaries at Redmond Jr. High have been here before I arrived in 2001 and they are key figures who are crucial to our staff, students and parents.
Please know that I fully support our secretaries and want to see them supported by our District in a financial manner. Dr. Kimball, I was truly amazed and proud of the way you handled the budget constraints when it came to last year's decisions on keeping vs. riffing teachers, new construction, sports fees, and all the issues you had to balance. Your creativity, the way you asked the public, the brilliant work you put into our District finances were just awesome. Please use that same genius to work things out equitably for our secretaries too!
Heidi Knable
8th Grade Language Arts (L.A.)
Redmond Jr. High
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