Award-winning school secretaries, including Goldie Colodny Award winner Gailmae Carr (3rd from left) join School Secretaries Chapter Leader Sheryl Pender (center) onstage.
“This is just a small token of what my members really deserve,” School Secretaries Chapter Leader Sheryl Pender said of the UFT’s 39th annual School Secretaries Awards Soiree on June 5. Secretaries are “the multifaceted group that holds the school community together.” The soiree honored 25 school secretaries in front of over 250 guests in Shanker Hall. Gailmae Carr, a school secretary at PS 297 in Brooklyn, received the Goldie Colodny Award for her work as a mentor, a School Secretaries Chapter Executive Board member and a traveling NYSUT and NEA delegate. The award is “confirmation that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” said Carr, who brought her two adult daughters and son with her. “I was so glad I could share this moment with my children.” Raylene Charles, a school secretary at IS 68 in Canarsie, Brooklyn, said she enjoyed “letting my hair down” to SOCA — soul of calypso — music on the dance floor. She received an award a few years ago. “It feels good to be nominated by your peers,” she said. “Who doesn’t want to be celebrated?”
