After receiving notice of a teacher’s absence, secretary Donna Schultz races to find a substitute to fill in their spot. Upon arriving to the school, she darts for the intercom and recites the often heard phrase, “Please call Donna Schultz at 45212.”

“It’s weird,” Schultz said. “I can walk around the school and people don’t know who I am, but they know my voice and my phone number.”

According to Schultz, students may know of her, but do not know what she does or her location in the building.

“[Students] wonder where I am because I am not attached to a certain principal,” Schultz said. “They don’t know where to find me until they don’t hang their hang tag [on their car] or they have [other] parking discipline.”

Schultz monitors the student and faculty parking lot, she also helps associate principal Tom Wendt with fundraising and gets substitutes for the school. According to Schultz, finding substitutes takes first priority.

“[Teachers] have until six o’clock to call our system, which is called SubFinder, and that system automatically calls subs in the district to work,” Schultz said. “After six o’clock they have to call their department chair, and their department chair lets me know that the teacher is not going to be here. I immediately have to start finding somebody [to substitute], sometimes on my way to work. When I hit the building, that’s when you guys hear me over the PA system.”

Besides her regular secretary duties, Schultz mentors senior player Cory Geisler.

“Last year and previous years I would come in once a week and talk to her about my grades,” Geisler said. “She would make me write down my favorite candy and she would give it to me. Mrs. Schultz is pretty cool.”

Four years ago, before coming to the school, Shultz’s worked at Klein Oak as a job coach for special needs students.

“I would take the special needs students out to different business,” Schultz said. “I trained them so they can go out after they graduate and hopefully be employable. It was a lot of fun.”

As well as having her son Aaron Shultz graduate from  here, her daughter Kayla Shaw also works here as a counselor.

“When she was in the last stages of her pregnancy, all the ladies [in the office] were worried about her because she worked up until the day she delivered,” Schultz said. “They would come get me and say, ‘you need to come get Kayla, and she needs to go home, [and] needs to get her feet up.’”

According to lead counselor Milissa Lassiter, she enjoys working with the mother-daughter team because she likes to playfully tease them.

“I know that her daughter sometime gets embarrassed by her mom,” Lassiter said. “That’s usually what we tease [Shaw] about. When Mrs. Schultz gets on the intercom she gets really embarrassed, and at the end of school when Mrs. Schultz sang in front of the staff, her daughter wanted to crawl under the table.”
Donna Schultz said she enjoys working for the district and cherishes her school family.

“Being a part of the community and also being a part of the Klein Collins family, as well has having family members that work for the district, you feel good going to work,” Donna Schultz said. “I love the interaction with the students. It’s not a dread [going to work], it’s exciting.”