
Keeping school employees working: It’s good for kids and good for the economy
By Jamie Michael
In normal times, April brings masses of tourists to Lee County in Southwest Florida. They come to play in the surf and sand of the beautiful Gulf Coast beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel. Tourism is the backbone of our local economy that provides critical resources for public services, including our neighborhood public schools. But in the new reality created by the coronavirus pandemic, tourists are being told to stay home; so, our beaches are empty, our hotels are vacant and our restaurants are closed.
In a county where a lot of our schoolchildren’s parents work in the tourism and hospitality industry, this is a tough time, and it’s likely to get even tougher the longer our beaches and area attractions remain closed. When our schools closed in mid-March, our superintendent, Gregory Adkins, and our Food and Nutrition Services director, Lauren Couchois, worked with our union to put together a plan to launch a grab-and-go meal program to provide food for students in our district while schools are closed due to the COVID-19 crisis.
We’re a fairly large school district, with about 95,000 students, so, while schools are closed, we’re feeding an average of 13,000 kids every Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at 37 school sites. Our bus drivers also are delivering meals on about nine routes around the district.
Meals — breakfast and lunch — are free to any child 18 and under. That means our food service workers are preparing and distributing between 23,000 and 25,000 meals every day! Grab-and-go meals are available through 13 school district community partners at locations around the Fort Myers area.
I’m proud to be part of a school system that strives to care for and serve all of its students and that has robust labor-management cooperation.
Our superintendent and department directors work closely with our unions on a regular basis to discuss and work through issues. During the regular school year, the School District of Lee County provides free lunches to 100 percent of students through its Community Eligibility Program. The CEP, which has been offered at some school sites for about four years, was made available at all 79 public schools in our county for the first time at the start of this academic year.

As president of the Support Personnel Association of Lee County, I believe that what’s good for the students we serve is what’s good for school employees, and it’s also what’s good for our local community and economy. In addition to keeping children fed, our district is going the extra mile to keep our school support employees working during this difficult time for our entire community. With nearly 4,500 school support workers (who are part of a total of more than 12,000 full- and part-time employees), the school district is the second-largest employer in Lee County, right behind the local hospital system, which unfortunately has had to furlough workers.
Our entire school district benefits from the highly cooperative relationship between our union, the school district and our superintendent. Together, we’ve developed a structure that ensures that our students get what they need, while providing job security for food service workers, bus drivers, paraprofessionals, school clerical workers, maintenance employees, custodians, security officers and information technology employees — our whole family of school support employees.
While schools are closed, school support employees are spending their workdays participating in online training and professional development to improve the level of service they provide to our schools and students. We’re always wishing we had more time for training, so we’re grateful to be able to take advantage of this time to do just that, while we recognize that others may not be able to.
The work that we are doing together to get through this crisis is proof-positive that school communities do work best for students when all employees have a voice and the power to make a difference through their union.

Jamie Michael is a 33-year veteran paraprofessional in the School District of Lee County and president of the Support Personnel Association of Lee County.