Three highly respected Coupeville High School employees have submitted letters to Coupeville Superintendent Steve King and the school board asking for help.
The trio — Attendance/Athletic Secretary Barbi Ford, Fiscal/ASB Secretary Rosalie Fix, and Registrar/Counseling Secretary Eileen Stone — have combined to give 32 years to the district.
Now, all three, while describing their deep love of the school and community, say CHS is reaching a breaking point.
With Vice Principal Leonard Edlund out since the start of the year with medical issues, and Dean of Students Tom Black — originally a budget cut — brought back only on a part-time basis, they describe a situation where the administration is stretched extremely thin — and the support crew is taking the brunt of it.
“It shouldn’t be the norm to have the principal be the primary lunchroom supervisor 5+ hours a week, while more pressing matters must be put on hold,” Fix said.
“It should not be the norm to have the Fiscal Secretary monitor Tutorial 2+ hours a week or for the Athletics Secretary to monitor ISS or after school study groups.
“It should not be the norm for the MS/HS Attendance Secretaries to feel the need to forfeit their lunches and breaks most days, because no one is available to cover the office that cannot be unattended.”
That’s a sentiment shared by her co-workers, and all three are asking the district to put an emphasis on hiring much-needed help.
“I feel like many of the hardships that we secretaries are facing could be decreased if we were able to have a general education paraeducator to provide some coverage,” Ford said.
“To help with tutorial, assist lunch supervision, allowing our counselors to be available to students in crisis, without leaving student lunch unsupervised, help cover secretary lunches, provide some direction and supervision for discipline and in school suspension, cover our front desks in the event of training or forums, maybe even help track credit recovery classes that we used to have a fulltime dedicated teacher to do.
“It is getting to the point that we are going to have to look at our job descriptions and identify our priorities because, quite frankly, it is getting nearly impossible to get everything done.”
The three letters are published on the agenda for the year’s final school board meeting, which is set for Thursday, Dec. 14 at 5:30 PM in the Kathleen Anderson Boardroom on the CHS campus.
School board members acknowledge receiving correspondence during those meetings, but it is not read aloud.
Public comment is allowed earlier in the meeting.
To read the full letters, pop over to:
Rosalie Fix:
Click to access Letter%20from%20R.%20Fix.pdf
Barbi Ford:
Click to access Letter%20from%20B.%20Ford.pdf
Eileen Stone:
Click to access Email%20from%20E.%20Stone.pdf
Coupeville Sports 