ARLINGTON, Texas –Texas Trust Credit Union is honoring 38 school employees in nine North Texas school districts as Trusted Heroes.
Recipients each receive up to $250 and recognition for their positive contributions during the COVID pandemic in the 2020-21 school year.
The Trusted Heroes campaign was created to highlight school employees who became frontline heroes during the pandemic, the credit union said.
“The exceptional work they did to support their schools and districts and for developing new approaches to learning and work that boosted student engagement and kept faculty, staff, and students safe,” TTCU stated. “Heroes include food service workers, school bus drivers, counselors, custodians and maintenance staff, nurses, and teachers.”
The credit union said a few of the Trusted Heroes include:
· Matt Bostick, a physical education teacher at Duff Elementary in the Arlington Independent School District. Dedicated to keeping everyone healthy by staying physically fit, he created a weekly workout video offering exercise tips for students and adults that they could do at home while schools were closed. The videos were distributed via the district’s social media channels, enabling anyone who followed the district to benefit.
· For cafeteria manager Phyllis Jackson with Grand Prairie Independent School District, ensuring students were eating healthy during the pandemic was her top priority. Although schools were closed, Jackson and her team continued to prepare fresh meals daily that they packaged and distributed through the school’s drive-up food line, which Jackson organized. Jackson made sure that all families were greeted with a smile and friendly face as they came to pick up food, regardless of the weather. Jackson also stepped in many times to help other campuses prepare food when they were short-staffed.
· One of Hurst Euless Bedford Independent School District’s Trusted Heroes includes longtime bus driver Leon Gossett. Students, faculty, and peers deem Gossett a hero because of his unwavering dedication and support to getting students safely to school, back home, and to school events. Gossett is a perfect attendance winner each year too, so he has never missed a day at work. And when he wasn’t able to drive students to school during the pandemic he was a steady and positive influence to his peers, helping them solve problems and lending a helping hand wherever needed.
“Our schools are full of good, kind, and hard-working people who make our schools a wonderful learning environment,” said Debi Knoblock, AVP-business & community engagement. “We are honored to be able to recognize these Trusted Heroes for truly making a difference during the pandemic.”