For school secretary, education runs in the family

By NATALIE BELL

When you walk into a school office and there is calm amongst the chaos, when things are running smoothly despite the normal overload of paperwork, last-minute crises and administrative malfunctions, then you know there is a master secretary at the helm. At PS 112, in the Baychester section of the Bronx, that’s Nickie Zambardino.

A school secretary for 15 years, Zambardino has engendered great respect not only among her PS 112 colleagues for her smooth handling of her school but among her colleagues throughout the city, whom she has helped to train. Zambardino’s dedication to the city’s public schools has helped created educators of her own son and daughter.

“The secretary’s job is very difficult now,” says Zambardino, acknowledging that most people, especially parents, expect them to know everything.

“We have to know what we’re doing because a lot of these parents don’t,” she says deliberately. “We’re the only people they have. They come here first.”

The spunky, five-foot dynamo is a payroll secretary, but she also knows pupil accounting and procurement, which makes her a gem not only at her school but also to her fellow members of the school secretaries chapter.

Moreover, her own son and daughter, both of whom practically grew up in the school where she works and then followed their mother’s lead by launching careers in Bronx public schools, can attest to the rare quality of her knowledge and ability.

Though her main job is making sure everybody at her school gets paid correctly and in a timely manner, Zambardino pitches in and helps the other secretaries in the office as often as she can. “Pupil accounting secretaries are very overworked,” she explains. They’re increasingly needed to assist parents who can’t speak English or have trouble filling out forms, she says. “They have to make sure children are where they’re supposed to be at all times and that nobody gets lost.”

As an executive board member in the UFT school secretaries chapter, Zambardino also instructs new secretaries in schools in all five boroughs about the intricacies of their jobs in training seminars sponsored by the union.

At the summer institute, held at the UFT Brooklyn office each year, new secretaries receive the union handbook on the role of the school secretary, a huge, three-ring binder that Zambardino helped organize and write. She and other executive board members exchange phone numbers with the new secretaries so that they can call whenever they have questions.

“I don’t want anybody sitting in a school office thinking they don’t know what they’re doing. Just call somebody and they’ll help you.” If one executive board member doesn’t know the answer to someone’s question, she’ll call someone else who does. “Even if I have to call three, four, five people, I’ll get you an answer,” Zambardino says.

UFT Secretaries Chapter Leader Jackie Ervolina says Zambardino inspires other secretaries to speak up about workplace concerns and to connect with one another.

“She’s outspoken,” Ervolina says of her colleague. “She has a sense of what is right and what is fair.”

When her son and daughter were small, Zambardino nurtured their interest in education, making sure they understood the importance of learning, as much as how to make the system serve them well. Both children, now adults, work in public schools and credit the example both their mother and father set with their decision to make education a high priority in their lives. Their father, Gary Zambardino Sr., taught high school when the kids were growing up.

The son, Gary Jr., now works as a paraprofessional in special education at PS 160 in Co-op City. He welcomed his mother’s suggestion that he consider the job, having grown up taking the same types of classes.

“When I was in school, I had a lot of issues with reading and math,” recalls Gary. “Every day was worse because it got harder and harder. I always felt I was going further and further back.”

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