What Parents Need to Know About Your Child’s School Administrative Assistant
The rain started 10 minutes before first bell last Monday, turning our elementary school sidewalk into a slip-and-slide and turning the front office into a sea of dripping rain boots and forgotten lunch boxes. I was standing by the main door collecting late slips when I saw Ms. Rita, our school’s administrative assistant, pull a granola bar out of her desk for a first grader who’d left his breakfast on the kitchen counter, talk a frazzled mom down from a panic attack about a missing immunization form, and reschedule three parent-teacher conferences all in the span of 90 seconds.
A week before that, I’d gotten an email from a parent of one of my third graders asking, “What does the admin assistant actually do all day, anyway? It seems like they just answer the phone and keep people from seeing the principal.” It’s a question I get pretty often from new parents, so I’ve started thinking about all the things that happen behind the front desk that most people never see.
Last October, my student Javi, who has persistent asthma, forgot his inhaler at home on a cool, high-pollen day. His mom was stuck in a work meeting 45 minutes across town, couldn’t leave to drop it off. Javi stopped by the office on his way to recess just to mention it, and Ms. Rita pulled our school’s emergency spare albuterol (we have a standing order for kids who frequently forget theirs) and walked it up to me at the playground before Javi even started wheezing hard enough to need it. She didn’t have to do that—she could have called me and waited for me to come get it, which would have taken 10 extra minutes. But she knows Javi, she knows his mom’s work schedule, and she knew getting it there fast mattered.
A month into this school year, we had a new kindergartener who cried every single morning when his mom dropped him off. Ms. Rita started letting him sit on the little step stool by her desk and pick a sticker from her private stash before he walked to class. She told me it wasn’t just for him—his mom stood in the hallway crying the first three days, too, and five extra minutes with the administrative assistant gave both of them time to breathe before the day started. That’s the stuff that doesn’t make it into the school newsletter or the job description.
Most parents only interact with the front office when something goes wrong, so it’s easy to see the administrative assistant as just the person who tells you the principal is in a meeting. But the reality is, they do most of the small, essential work that keeps the school running every day, and knowing how to work with them makes life easier for you, your kid, and your kid’s teacher.
The first concrete thing I tell parents to do is save the front office phone number in your phone contacts right now, before you need it. Most parents add their kid’s teacher’s number and forget the office, but if you have a last-minute change to how your kid is getting home, or you need to drop off a forgotten project or lunch, calling the office will get you results way faster than emailing your kid’s teacher. I’m with 28 kids from 8:30 to 3:00, and I don’t check my email until my prep period at 2:15 most days. Last year, a parent emailed me at 2 p.m. to say their kid would be picked up by his grandma instead of taking the bus. I didn’t see the email until after the buses had left, and the kid ended up waiting 20 minutes in the bus loop upset, while grandma waited 20 minutes in the front parking lot frustrated. If that parent had called the administrative assistant directly, it would have been sorted out in two minutes.
That leads to the second thing: for any time-sensitive, same-day request, go to the administrative assistant first, not your teacher. They are set up to handle those quick changes all day long, while we’re busy teaching. If you have questions about registration forms, immunization requirements, after-school care sign-ups, or early dismissal, the admin assistant knows the answer way better than I do. I can barely keep track of my own lesson plans and the permission slips for our upcoming field trip, let alone remember the district’s latest rule about what counts as an approved birth certificate for new students.
If you’re new to the school, or even just starting a new year, stop by the front office for 30 seconds at back-to-school night or when you’re dropping off supplies to introduce yourself and your kid. It doesn’t have to be a long conversation—just a quick “hi, I’m Mara, this is my son Sam who’s in first grade this year” is enough. They see hundreds of people a day, and putting a name to a face makes it that much easier to help you out when you call with a question a month later.
I stopped by the office after school that rainy Monday to return a stapler I’d borrowed the week before. Ms. Rita was updating the bus list for the next day, and her half-empty coffee mug was sitting cold next to the computer. I asked if she ever gets annoyed that most parents don’t realize how much work she does. She shrugged and clicked enter, said “They’ve got enough going on worrying about their kids. I don’t need a parade.”
It’s not a perfect system. Some days there’s a backlog of calls, and you might wait a few hours for a return call, and some days a forgotten lunch still gets to your kid 10 minutes late. But most of the time, the administrative assistant is the first person your kid sees when they’re upset and need a minute, and the person who sorts out all the tiny messes that come with 500 kids showing up every day. Knowing that, and knowing how to work with them, takes a lot of stress out of the school year for everyone.
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