Lifetime Achievement Award: Peter Kopcha, Director of School Support Services
Peter committed his professional life to the mission of BOCES. He has worked tirelessly for over 35 years to meet the needs of our school districts either directly or by impacting the goals and functioning of our division and BOCES as a whole. Pete has used his knowledge, relationships and passion for the work to develop new services and maintain the quality of those services that most benefit the staff and students in our schools. For his dedication and commitment the School Support Services Division proudly presents our Director with this STAR award.

Creative: Maryann Osborn, Communications Service
She adeptly supports 41 staff members in 11 counties around the state, and has quickly become a pivotal member of our team, helping us use technology to improve communications and be more efficient at what we do. Examples of her creative use of technology to improve operations throughout our program include:

• Building and maintaining a Web-based calendar to track and record staff vacation time and absences, which team members can easily reference.

• Helping to create our service’s intranet and maintain critical information on the site allowing team members near and far to routinely share best practices and crucial documents.

• Taking a leadership role in helping to build the new School Support Services intranet by participating on the planning team, helping train other intranet authors in the division, and organizing essential content.

Maryann Osborn is extremely creative in her use of technology to improve operations and unite the Communications team despite the geographic challenges that separate us. Stay tuned … we’ll be piloting Maryann’s latest idea soon – developing a blog spot on the Communications intranet to organize and archive staff discussions about hot topics or breaking news in education.

Customer-Driven: Andie Waldron, Substitute Coordination
She willingly accepted the added responsibility of payroll last year and has gone above and beyond in her dealings with substitutes, school secretaries, the Career and Technical Education (CTE) division and payroll to make sure that all information is submitted accurately, thoroughly and in a timely manner.
Andie Waldron saw a need and filled it by designing a new sign-in sheet for substitutes when they arrive at a school to work. The new form alleviates confusion for subs and school secretaries, and is used when generating payroll–making the entire process run more smoothly. Knowing that people are depending on her, she completes work at home when necessary. Andie is definitely customer-driven and dedicated to doing her job with integrity.

Customer-Driven: Adrienne Leon, Communications Service
When school superintendents from the BOCES 24 component districts were seeking support on how to effectively communicate with community members and elected officials on the hot-button issue of property tax caps, she enthusiastically accepted the challenge of researching and writing a publication that could be used regionally to inform public debate on this complex subject. She poured hours into developing the project, doing exhaustive research on the topic and steering the document through many revisions and multiple editors – all while juggling the considerable demands of her regular duties in the Schenectady City School District’s Communications Office. Adrienne Leon exemplifies customer service and a customer-driven work ethic. She went “above and beyond” to deliver a high-quality publication with far-reaching value that our school superintendents are pleased to be able to use as a hand-out at community presentations, as an insert in district newsletters and feature on school district Web sites.

Dedicated: Erin Brewer, Comprehensive Approaches to Prevention/Intervention Traning (CAPIT)
She wears many hats within the CAPIT program and does it well! From working with youth in the Reality Check program and serving as a substitute counselor to assisting schools with 21st Century grants, her positive attitude and willingness to help are hot commodities in an employee. More recently, many BOCES employees have had an opportunity to benefit from her talents as a trainer in the Collaborative Communications course.
Erin Brewer uses an energetic, interesting and inspiring approach to teach and convey new perspectives on communicating effectively both in the work place and at home. She is clearly dedicated as evidenced by her flexibility to serve the CAPIT program wherever and whenever they need help.

Leadership: Cynthia Holmes, Health, Safety and Risk Management
She has always gone above and beyond in providing service to schools. She will often work long hours and do extensive research on health and safety concerns for her school districts. By researching numerous possible resources, she develops interesting and creative ways to present mandated trainings on Hazcom and other regulatory topics. She has demonstrated clear leadership among her co-workers who often seek her assistance and knowledge when they need thorough reference information to help address concerns in their own school districts. One grateful co-worker has altered the phrase (and the Web site name) from “Ask Jeeves” to “Ask Cynthia.”  Cynthia Holmes’ impact has spread throughout the Health, Safety and Risk Management program because she inspires others to share their resources. The sharing culture that she has fostered among her trainees and peers is one of the main reasons our districts can count on accurate information and quality service from every employee in our program.

Student-centered: Carol Green, Instructional Itinerant Services/English as a Second Language (ESL)
As a mentor to three teachers in the ESL program, she regularly offers advice and moral support, and shares educational materials and resources with the entire ESL team. She is a positive presence, and a dedicated and gifted educator. Carol Green applies many of these qualities, as well as patience and understanding in the classroom where she provides English language instruction for students with limited English proficiency. Carol is highly student-centered whether working directly with students assessing and meeting their diverse needs or with the teachers she mentors in the ESL program.

Supportive: Maryalice Hannan, School Library System
She has worked with several different managers and various support staff throughout her many years at BOCES. Her strength is making sure that everyday tasks get done – every day. She offers help to anyone who asks, and has taught me the value of quiet dependability as she goes about her work each day.
A seemingly simple task like courier mail involves dealing with a lot of different people, organizing materials in a way that efficiently delivers them to our schools. When you leave something in the courier room – you just assume it will end up at its proper destination. Maryalice Hannan provides the almost invisible presence required to ensure that happens. Maryalice certainly supports the Library Services program, but if you need a key to a conference room, a quick lesson in using the laptops, a hand on the loading dock or help cleaning the kitchen, she is always there to help out and support all the programs in the division.

Teamwork: Kristin Bucciferro and Micki Jones, Health, Safety and Risk Management
These two individuals partnered on a project that required experience, research and, in the end, the courage to put pen to paper and subject the resulting plan to peer scrutiny. So often, in the Risk Management program, we rely solely on our knowledge of state and federal regulations to determine our perception of the work that our districts do. In updating the Chemical Hygiene Plan template, offered to school districts as part of an overall Written Safety Plan, Kristin Bucciferro and Micki Jones demonstrated an excellent example of creative team decision making that complied with required standards and considered the customer’s (in this case, a science teacher’s) perception of them.