Their combined experience is nearly half a century; they’ve worked under 17 different principals in six different schools; and they have finely tuned the art of multi-tasking.
As elementary school secretaries, Marilyn Dougherty and Janis Link serve as the first line of defense at Lincoln and Park schools, respectively. Theirs are the first faces someone sees when entering the building and the first voices they hear when calling the school. They set the tone for the entire school.
“We do a little bit of everything,” Link said modestly, noting her primary duties balance secretarial work with being a receptionist, bookkeeper and nursemaid.
She also answers questions – lots of questions every day – from students, teachers, parents, the public and her principal. And most of the time she can come up with an answer.
Dougherty added to that list of things to do with many more chores handled daily by elementary secretaries throughout the district. They include assisting the principal when needed, running lunch-count sheets, organizing and working enrollment, collecting and receipting enrollment fees, collecting and receipting lunch money, scanning lunch cards and running reports, maintaining student records on the computer, recording attendance daily, answering four telephone lines of incoming calls, providing first aid when needed, administering medication to students, ordering and maintaining school and office supplies, maintaining financial records, processing U.S. and interoffice mail, tracking substitute teachers and completing end-of-month reports for general and petty cash for the USD 428 Board of Education.
Meanwhile, secretaries take care of whatever else lands on their desks and deal with it when it needs to be done.
“The duties performed by a school secretary are many,” Dougherty said. “Some you don’t even count as duties because they just come naturally.
“When I started, there were no computers and the requirements were fewer,” Dougherty said. “Now, there are very few times that there is not something to do or someone needing something. The days go fast and the weeks even faster.”
Link agrees that things have changed, but she’s not nostalgic about the old days.
“I remember doing everything with student management using a typewriter, using a rotary phone and having no air conditioning,” she said, laughing. “I don’t have to bring deodorant to school to apply three times a day.”
For her, the best part of the job hasn’t changed at all.
“The kids – I love the interaction with the kids,” she said.
“I love my job or I wouldn’t keep doing it,” Dougherty said. “I enjoy everything about my job. Every day is different whether it is with students, parents or faculty.”
Secretaries at other grade schools include Jolene Kirmer, Eisenhower; Shari Middleton, Jefferson; and Deb Witcraft and Donna Zimmerman, both at Riley.