Less than two years after Barbara Schiffner began working at Natomas Unified, she was named its Classified Manager of the Year today.
Supt. Chris Evans walked into Schiffner’s Ed Center office with a bouquet of flowers to notify her of the award. She is the district’s Director of Information Technology.
Hours earlier, Evans had similarly surprised Natomas Middle School Principal Shea Borges with news that she is NUSD’s new Certificated Manager of the Year.
District leaders provided the following account of why Schiffner is a worthy winner of the prestigious district-wide honor:
1) In the time she has been here, she has made a significant impact in her own department as well as the entire district through her leadership, dedication and hard work.
2) She exemplifies many of our leadership standards by effectively supervising her staff and raising the expectations to provide high-quality service to our schools. She used data and evidence to identify work order closure rates; provided training and set expectations with her staff; and eventually created a new structure for her team to support our schools.
3) Barbara worked to developed pathways to promotion and has provided great new training opportunities for her team to build capacity and improve their skills. She is developing standard operating procedures to provide high-quality service.\
4) She supports our belief that diversity is a strength hiring staff the reflect the diversity of our students.
5) Barbara also worked with leaders in other departments to create a school site monitoring and support team called CAST (Customer Actin Support Team) in which they regularly visit schools to monitor and ensure high quality service.
6) Barbara has managed large projects and improved the technology infrastructure for our district, from server rooms to classrooms, which has benefited teaching, learning and work.
7) Barbara handles challenging situations in a calm and responsible manner. She works tirelessly to ensure that she and her team are responsive to entire schools as well as individuals.
Barbara has received praise, respect, and appreciation from many people because she is a committed, collaborative, caring, and exemplary leader, district leaders added.
