Cuts and consolidation of ARHS clerical staff raise alarm

To students, ARHS often seems to run like a well-oiled machine. Attendance is entered by the end of the day, and parents and guardians know if we didn’t make it to school or if we left for any reason. Teachers (and substitute teachers) are at the ready, and buses arrive, so field trips leave successfully. College applications, recommendations, and transcripts are delivered to colleges in a timely way.

It is the clerical staff who often make the wheels behind the scenes turn and that smooth the rough edges of our days; they are friendly faces that excuse us for doctors appointments, sign our passes, and give words of encouragement before entering an intimidating meeting; the ones who make it not just possible for us to successfully make it through high school but to receive our diplomas as we cross the stage or hand out the award certificates we receive at the end of the year. 

While these things are not always seen on the surface, the impact of the work of clerical staff is felt across the building at ARHS.

This is why, when administrators, teachers, paraeducators, and students returned to school this fall to discover three fewer clerical staff, concerns arose among students and staff, especially as they watched these staffers’ co-workers—and even student volunteers—juggling to carry their former responsibilities.

Two members of the clerical staff whose positions were cut are Chloe Roldan-Guzman, a student-facing administrative assistant (who worked side by side with another main office administrative assistant, Jaida Lyons), and Julie Woynar, an administrative assistant to Deans of Students Mary Custard and Lamikco “Meka” Magee, as well as Hearing Specialist Maria Fabozzi; Woynar was also known as the “attendance secretary.”  In that role, Woynar took daily attendance and class-by-class attendance and communicated with staff, students, and families to maintain accurate building-wide student records linked to decisions about awarding students credit. 

Roldan-Guzman took an open elementary position in the district, and her position was eliminated at ARHS. Woynar was shifted over to the middle school, and her position was eliminated at ARHS. The third staff member whose position was at least temporarily consolidated and removed from the high school was Registrar Erika Lisle. 

When Lisle took a leave of absence, rather than refilling her position, her job was consolidated into a K-12 registrar position now held by Mildred Martinez at the middle school. In the absence of an on-site registrar at ARHS, Assistant Principal Sam Camera began picking up urgent daily tasks at ARHS normally completed by Lisle, as did Wilnelia Melendez, the administrative assistant to guidance and career and college counseling, who continues to do so.

Though Camera now functions mostly as a consultant, Administrative Assistant Judi DellaMarco, Counseling Department Head Lisa Zephyr, and School Counselor Kelly Larcheveque will be working with Martinez to get her up to speed on high-school tasks.

Many items on the long list of both Roldman-Guzman and Woynar’s responsibilities were directly added to the plate of Jaida Lyons, the other main office administrative assistant, with additional tasks falling on to Lirey Rodriguez, the administrative assistant to Talib Sadiq, and Melendez.

For example, Roldan-Guzman took care of underclass awards, student visitors, backup substitute coverage, book fines, Chromebook fines, organizing field trips and transportation, posting daily announcements via email for the whole school, enrollment verification letters, faculty/staff parking permits, work permits, staff key distribution, handing out passes to students coming in late, checking in visitors, scheduling of meetings in room 117, printing bathroom passes for teachers, adjusting the bell schedule, manually ringing bells when needed, and much more. 

Since her position was cut, student volunteers have also been helping staff the main office, earning credit through an ALPS (Alternative Learning Program), but helping lessen the brunt of the absence of these clerical workers.

Principal Talib Sadiq has seen the stress this year amongst the clerical staff firsthand, especially with his administrative assistant, Rodriguez, being an essential part of a collaborative team who is picking up the slack.

Sadiq said he is not happy about the cuts to clerical staff.  While he was told that Central Office wanted to figure out “how to restructure clerical responsibilities” due to budget constraints, managing the impact of that decision has been rough. 

“They think the job can be done with three people. I do not agree,” he said.

Although work has been dispersed among the remaining staff, Sadiq said their load is still “double the amount” that the clerical staff are used to. Some jobs, like gathering and sharing daily announcements about clubs, activities, school-based testing, and other events with students and staff over email have just stopped being completed. 

Custard expressed frustration over the recent loss of Woynar in her office and the increased pressure that has been placed on the front office by moving attendance responsibilities to Lyons, who also picked up a large share of Roldan-Guzman’s work. 

First, Custard explained that the school has not always had strong clerical staffing. When she advocated for an administrative assistant years ago, she said her workload lifted and things improved in the day-to-day operations of the Deans’ office, tasked with managing student discipline. She liked that there was someone to meet students as they entered the Dean’s office, sometimes to report personal concerns about safety or bullying. 

Now that there is no administrative assistant in the Dean’s Office, students who go there often wait unattended, especially if there is no adult available when they arrive.

On top of that, Custard sees the strain on the remaining clerical staff. “They are supposed to do everything they have been doing and attendance on top of that,” Custard said. 

To help ease the workload, Custard has been stepping in where she can, noting that “whoever made these decisions does not understand the importance, volume, and the level of work that the clerical staff does for us.”

The clerical staff affected by the changes were willing to share an official list of their responsibilities and how they had shifted with the cuts, but declined to speak with The Graphic. Requests for comment from the superintendent were not returned in time for publication.