SAN LUIS — By 6 a.m. most weekdays, Crystal Quintana is walking through the kitchen doors of Centennial School District R-1 to tackle the first tasks of the morning, which sometimes means molding homemade dough into cinnamon rolls or wrestling that same dough into slabs for square pizzas. Other times, dozens of chicken patties wait to be laid across sheet pans while 7-pound cans of baked beans sit ready to be opened and emptied.
Twelve or 13 hours later, she’ll head home to tend to her family’s pigs, cows and horses.
The minutes in between hurl Quintana in a blur of different directions: As the food service director for the rural district, she feeds about 160 students with as many meals made from scratch as her team can manage. She also oversees an after-school tutoring program for kids falling behind in at least one class and runs a Friday learning program for students who are trying to make up credits. And Quintana, who lives about 8 miles away in San Acacio, usually then shuttles several kids home, driving into remote stretches of the southern Colorado district to drop them off one by one.
And that’s all if the day goes as planned.
“I just help wherever they need me,” said Quintana, who also takes over bus routes when no one else can.
Stretching across multiple jobs has become a kind of chaotic norm for her and many other educators and school employees in Colorado, where chronic staff shortages have spread more work across fewer people. While Colorado continues to face teacher shortages, many schools also desperately need more school bus drivers, food service workers, counselors and paraprofessionals.
Crystal Quintana prepares chicken sandwiches for lunch, Feb. 6, in the school’s kitchen in San Luis. She feeds about 160 students with as many meals made from scratch as her team can manage. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
For the 2022-23 school year, 1,465 support roles needed to be filled — including school social workers, counselors and psychologists, according to data from the state education department. Of those open positions, 257 were left unfilled for the school year while 153 were filled using a shortage mechanism, such as what the state calls a temporary educator eligibility authorization, which allows support staff who qualify with a bachelor’s or higher degree to work while they complete their education program. And the proportion of vacant support positions jumped by nearly 34% from the previous year.
“In the face of the educator shortage, we’re using those individuals very extensively for all kinds of things including classroom support and sometimes substitute teaching when they’re eligible,” said Colleen O’Neil, associate commissioner of educator talent at the Colorado Department of Education. “We’re asking them to pull double duty.”
Support staff positions like food service workers, bus drivers and school counselors keep a school humming, often by swooping in alongside teachers to fill critical positions that directly impact children’s school day, O’Neil said. That includes overseeing drop-offs so that elementary schoolers arrive safely inside the building, staffing lunch in the cafeteria or answering phones in the front office when office staff is gone and also staying after school to assist with tutoring or lead student clubs.
“Not unlike educators, they have more responsibility on their shoulders and become kind of those multitaskers that support our students,” O’Neil said.
That can take a harsh toll, she added.
Day after day of filling in for a class and not having time to even gulp down lunch escalates stress “and will push you into either a new career or a new opportunity,” O’Neil said.
“A bouncy ball” that never slows down
Quintana, who moved from Colorado Springs to the much sleepier San Luis Valley at age 15 and graduated high school from Centennial School District, has worked for the district since 2005 and covered a range of roles — from school suspension monitor to librarian to the superintendent’s secretary. She wants to retire in 10 years but worries it’ll be too hard to leave, particularly if the staff shortages that she said have worsened since the pandemic continue to strain the district.
“You get easily drawn in with no applicants,” Quintana, 45, said, noting that she started managing the after-school tutoring program after no one applied for the job.
She finds herself struggling to say no to extra duties that pop up, mostly because of the students she feeds, tutors and transports home.
“We want all our kids to excel,” said Quintana, whose grandkids, nieces and nephews attend school in the district after her and her husband’s five kids all graduated from there.
She decided to stay in the San Luis Valley as a teenager because of the quiet and stillness it gave her, miles away from the bustling city life she had known. But her days now keep her moving at a dizzying pace. By 1 p.m., she collapses into her office chair to turn her attention to a stack of paperwork, including planning school menus and filing records that track meals made, ingredients and number of students served. By then, half her day has elapsed, packed down to the minute with preparing breakfast and lunch, dishing up meals for students, tallying how many come through the serving line and cleaning the kitchen before she then gobbles up lunch beside her kitchen staff.
LEFT: Quintana checks the students schedule while planning the school menus, including the ingredients for each meal served, Feb. 6, at her desk near the kitchen area. RIGHT: Later in the day, Quintana receives a hug from her husband, Robert, a math teacher, in middle of their shifts in the school’s hallway. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
Quintana could head home at 3 p.m. for an hour break before tutoring begins, but she volunteers to stay at the district and help high schooler Valentin Felix, 19, earn credits through a kitchen course designed for alternative students. He organizes the closet and fridge and prepares snacks for other students.
Felix said he considers Quintana a teacher, someone he leans on for support with his schoolwork and a reliable adult who has helped him learn how to bake cookies and pizza and build a sense of patience.
Despite how full Quintana’s plate is at school, she doesn’t skimp on any of her responsibilities. She draws up school menus that provide students as many homemade meals as possible and minimize how much processed food they eat. She uses the same ingredients across a variety of meals to cut down on food costs, including pizza dough, which triples as the base for homemade bread and cinnamon rolls.
“One recipe could cook three meals,” she said. “It’s hard work, but on the flipside it’s better-tasting as well.”
She also joins other teachers in tutoring students after school. And she gives some of the district’s Filipino teachers a ride to and from school and even drives them an hour away to get groceries on weekends.
She hardly ever misses a day of work, according to Justina Rodriguez, a cook, who said Quintana would have to “be dying to go home.”
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“She’s always busy,” Rodriguez said. “She’s nonstop always.”
The neverending hours catch up with Quintana, who often feels like “a bouncy ball” that is “going all over the place,” but she is well aware that she is far from the only school staff member juggling competing priorities. Both teachers — including her husband, who teaches middle school math and high school shop — and counselors are quick to take time out of their day to substitute for a class when needed, she said.
“When there’s shortages, everybody gets pulled somewhere,” Quintana said.
In more remote rural districts in particular, “multiple people wear multiple hats,” Superintendent Toby Melster said.
The district of about 50 employees started the school year fully staffed, a relief for Melster, who in previous years has had to hire for three to five teaching positions and has watched as applications have dramatically dwindled amid the rising costs of housing and the challenge to keep up with pay in some neighboring districts.
Quintana chats with a student while giving several a ride home following their after-school tutoring session, Feb. 6, on the highway outside San Luis. Quintana regularly drives into remote areas in the southern Colorado school district to ensure kids who live far from the district make it home. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)
As a superintendent, Melster said he gets a feel for those staff members willing to help beyond the scope of their primary job. People who find a way to handle maintenance, drive school buses in the morning and afternoon and show up to games to sweep floors and empty trash cans. People who manage to teach and work concessions to help raise money for prom.
And people like Quintana, who Melster said helps the district keep chugging along.
No matter how long her days get, Quintana stays in Centennial School District, mostly because of the students.
“This is a small community, so we all know each other,” she said. “And yeah, we might not get along all the time, but at the end of the day we’re here for the kids.”