Volunteers Needed At Baldwin Schools

Alabama School School principals asking parents and grandparents to volunteer time at school following recent layoffs

by Pat Peterson

Published: Tue, October 13, 2009 - 3:59 pm CST Last Updated: Wed, October 21, 2009 - 7:30 pm CST

FOLEY, Alabama - Steve Pankey isn't at work today, he's spending his afternoon in a classroom at Foley Elementary.

"Education is the most important thing in a community and having a clean school that you can be proud of helps a whole area, a whole neighborhood, a whole city," says Pankey.

Pankey is just one of more than two dozen parents, grandparents and ordinary citizens pitching in at Foley Elementary. Earlier this month, the school lost a number of teacher's aides, custodians, librarians and cafeteria workers when the school board laid off more than 200 employees county-wide. Pankey knows how important education is in Baldwin County.

"People are coming here looking for jobs, people coming here on vacation, people who think about moving to this area want to know if the schools are good and they can see just by driving by that Foley Elementary is a good place that's due in large part to volunteers," says Pankey.

"When you lose cafeteria workers, when you lose custodians, people in the office, that void has to be filled by someone and everytime someone can step up and say I can do that job no matter how simple it is, that gives us time to do other things that need to be done at school," says Foley Elementary principal Dr. Bill Lawrence.

Lawrence has done an excellent job recruiting volunteers to plug in the holes.

"With the community and the parents and the volunteers, we're going to make it, but we need parents to step up," says Lawrence.

Earlier this month, the Baldwin County Board of Education terminated more than 200 employees to help off-set a 57 million dollar budget shortfall.

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