Sara Dunn has been working for the San Juan Unified School District since 1978 performing exceptionally and everyone can agree.

“Ms.Dunn has spent about 40 years in the district which is remarkable in itself,” said Karen Cassady, one of Dunn’s coworkers in the counseling department.

The district gives out five awards each year for the classified employee of the year in different divisions and Dunn won the award this year in the Secretarial Division.

“She has done many jobs for the district and she is kind of a safe haven for children in the morning when they don’t really have any place to go. She opens up the counseling office for them and she has also done many things in her community to help families and children. I and many of the other employees felt like she would be very worthy of this award because she goes the extra mile, she’s a wonderful women, and she really enjoys the young people,” said Cassady.

Dunn along with the other employees who got the award in different departments will have their names forwarded to the Sacramento County office of Education to be nominated for the countrywide classified employees of the year program.

Dunn hasn’t always worked at Rio Americano. She has only been at Rio for 12 years, but started out her career at the district office.  

Dunn has had an conglomeration of jobs working for the district like starting out in human resources, administrative assistant for the assistant superintendent of business support services, senior secretary in special education for five years etc, then took on a part time job for a few years because she wanted to be home with her children in the afternoon until coming to Rio in 2006.

At Rio she had held the job as the counseling secretary and now is the senior records and reports clerk.

“I just felt very honored, I don’t come to school every day trying to get an award so I felt like I did my job. I absolutely love working in a school and I wish I had spent more of my career in a school,” said Dunn.

Dunn goes above and beyond to make people feel welcome and is known for it.

Dunn feels like her favorite part of working at a school is definitely the kids.

“Meeting all sorts of different great personalities everyday. The students provide a hum to the day and it’s just different and great every single day,” said Dunn.

Dunn has three children all grown up by the names of David, Nicole and Rebecca that she “misses terribly”.

Dunn also has one grandchild and cherishes her dearly.

“They were my favorite job, raising them,” said Dunn.

When asked about retirement, Dunn says she doesn’t have a set time when she wants to retire. But she has started to think about it, and says if she starts having more grandchildren she will definitely start thinking about the time to retire.

In her spare time Dunn enjoys crocheting, quilting and spending time with her husband.