Council of Classified Employees  

Celebrate Classified School Employee Week

The people who make the schools work: the secretaries, school bus drivers, gardeners, building maintenance workers, janitors, paraprofessionals, and food service employees: everyone who isn't a teacher or administrator, without whom the teachers couldn't teach and the administrators couldn't do whatever it is administrators do.

The fourth week of May is designated Classified School Employee Week by the state of California. Each year the celebration is marked by recognition of the invaluable role played by classified employees.

The California state legislature passed SB 1552 in 1986, authorizing Classified School Employee Week. School and Community College Boards pass resolutions thanking classified employees; unions hold barbecues, and members wear union t-shirts. All of these forms of recognition are fine, and necessary. California classified employees are waiting, however, for the day when a week of recognition is no longer needed, because classified workers will on that day no longer fear outsourcing of their jobs, privatization of the schools they work in, and attacks on the public sector by anti-public education forces. On that day classified employees will all be paid decent salaries, have fully paid health care coverage, and a completely secure retirement. On that day our contributions to public education will be acknowledged each day by everyone connected with the schools. When that day comes every week will be Classified School Employee Week, and we will no longer need the official recognition. But until that day we'll take this week as our own.