Lover of trivia, The Office, Netflix and cooking, Alyssa Bednarz joined Niles West as the new Engineering, Computer Science and Business (ECSB) secretary. Transferring from Niles North, Bednarz has been with D219 since 2019. Prior to working with the district, she gained office managerial experience in higher education.

“I first started working at Chicago city colleges, at Wright College; I was there for five years, and that’s where I really got the ins and outs of working in an office and helping your colleagues and being face to face with students,” Bednarz said.

At Niles West, she keeps everything moving, supporting all the staff and students as much as she can to her best ability.

“I like to explain it as putting out little fires everywhere. Being a secretary, it’s your job to make sure everything runs smoothly, that your teachers, students, and director feel supported. We make sure that we have answers to everything, and if we don’t have an answer, we have to figure it out. As a secretary, your answer should never be no; it’s if you don’t know the answer, you say, ‘Let me find out, and I’ll get back to you.'”

Whether classes need resources or have issues, Bednarz is the one that makes it all happen. Teachers depend on her to keep their classes running smoothly.

“She keeps our entire department organized, and if we need anything from supplies to work orders to have something fixed, textbooks to be ordered, anything that we need to do our job, she’s the person we go to,” business teacher Eric Lueder said.

Because their boss oversees both Niles West and Niles North staff, it can be difficult to directly contact him; instead, teachers go through Bednarz.

“Without her here, it would make our ability to teach and do what we do in the classroom really hard because all of the little things that nobody sees, she does. She has a million jobs that are tiny, but all extremely important. She is like the oil in the engine that makes it go; we couldn’t do what we do without her,” Lueder said.

“I love being a secretary here, my department is great, my teachers love their job and it shows. Our students have been awesome. Working ECSB you get a little bit of everything; we’re engineering, computer science, and business, so we do a lot, and I love it here,” Bednarz said.