(HOST) As school lets out for the summer, commentator Deborah Luskin honors the sometimes overlooked – but always indispensable – school secretary.
(LUSKIN) As grateful as I am to the teachers who took care of my children, it was the school secretary who took care of me.
My children took to school like ducks to water; I was the one who had trouble letting them go. The school secretary helped me separate. She was the reassuring, constant presence I learned I could count on while my kids were at school.
I have three children, and each of their teachers knew about whichever child was in their class, but it was the secretary who knew what was going on in the whole school.
It was the secretary who I called at eight in the morning, if one of the girls wasn’t going to be in school that day, and the secretary who called me if one of them missed the bus on the way home. When she called me in the middle of the day, she always started the conversation with, “The girls are just fine . . .” then she’d tell me about a permission slip that had gone missing, or the health form that needed to be sent in, or some other administrative trivia she kept on top of, and without which, the school would grind to a halt.
As school secretary, she was the go-to person for everybody. When the kids forgot their lunch, they went to her for crackers and instant soup, which she kept in her desk. If a child was hurt or ill, they stretched out on her office couch. When a child needed to phone home, they went to her desk to place the call.
The school secretary was the person I’d call if I was running late. She’d find a job for the kids to do, so they felt useful and needed, not forgotten.
The secretary’s desk was right inside the front door. She knew exactly who was in the building, and most often, exactly where. And she knew everybody, not just each of the hundred and twenty kids in the school, she also knew their parents, their step parents, their grandparents, their siblings, and sometimes even their pets. She didn’t just know what was going on in school; half the time she knew what was going on at home, too.
Carol Dow was my school secretary. She retired the year my youngest graduated – and recently passed away. I don’t know what her official working hours wereSchool secretaries, but whenever I called school, she was always there. In my heart, she still is.
Deborah Luskin teaches writing and literature to non-traditional students in hospitals, libraries and prisons throughout Vermont.