Debra Stotts, an office clerk at Largo Middle School, was named Pinellas County Schools 2013 Support Employee of the Year during a breakfast celebration this morning at Feather Sound Country Club in Clearwater.
“The support employees do a lot in the schools. So much that most people don’t even know what we do. We may make a child’s day just in a matter of seconds by saying, ‘Hi, hello. How are you?’ So, to have us recognized for what we do is very important,” she said.
Stotts, a six-year veteran of the district, won the Indirect Involvement with Students category. She will represent the district’s more than 6,300 full- and part-time support employees in the Florida School-Related Employee of the Year program this spring.
She was nominated for her leadership, volunteerism, community outreach efforts and the relationships she builds with students and parents.
Stotts mentors three students, volunteered more than 700 hours at Largo Middle and Largo High schools during the 2011-12 school year and serves as Largo Middle’s PTSA president. She has organized numerous safety initiatives, school fundraisers and community service projects.
“She has always been one to arrive early and stay late. She is always the first to ask if there is something she can do to help…,” said Largo Middle Assistant Principal Gail George-Coppens in a nomination letter. “It is always Debbie who can appraise a task and devise methods by which it can be done more efficiently.”
Irma Vargas, a bilingual assistant at Skycrest Elementary School, won the Direct Involvement with Students category, and Katherine Dickinson, a secretary/bookkeeper at Curlew Creek Elementary School, won the Limited Involvement with Students category.