Support staff keep schools running in pandemic
Oklahoman
When COVID-19 flipped education upside down, all parts of the schoolhouse turned with it. The pandemic touched not only the classroom, but the cafeteria, the nurse’s office and the school bus.
As teachers and administrators found new ways to deliver instruction, changes were just as dramatic for the nearly 41,000 support staff working in Oklahoma’s public schools.
Oklahoma City Public Schools employs more than 2,400 support staff, 66% of whom are women and 71% are people of color.
These employees found themselves on the front lines of a pandemic, providing core services to their community, when all public schools in the state were ordered March 25, 2020, to close for the rest of the academic year.