Bend-La Pine Schools celebrate classified staff

From driving buses and maintaining buildings to greeting visitors and serving meals, Bend-La Pine Schools’ 895 classified staff members take on a wide range of tasks in order to support students and schools.

This week, Bend-La Pine Schools salutes these staff members during National Classified School Employees Week, March 4-8.

“I hope our families and community will join me in celebrating the tremendous contributions our support staff members make for our schools,” said Superintendent Shay Mikalson. “We have an incredible crew of support staff members who are willing to go above and beyond when needed and who provide extraordinary service every day.”

Each year, Bend-La Pine Schools honors one support staff member as Outstanding Support Person of the Year. This year, that staff member is painter Michael Martin, who serves the entire district in the role as painter.

Support Staff by the numbers:

We are home to 895 total classified employees, which includes a diverse collection of staff members including office staff, custodial, maintenance, transportation, Information Technology, educational assistance, nutrition services and more. Bus drivers transport more than 5,000 students every morning and afternoon – for a total of about 10,000 students each day. Maintenance and custodial crews maintain more than 2.65 million square feet of school building space. Nutrition Services staff members serve more than 17,000 meals every school day. That’s more than 2.5 million meals a year.