Education Spotlight: Merced County school employees recognized

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- In ABC30's segment, Education Spotlight, Action News Anchor Landon Burke will talk with Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) officials about some of the biggest topics in education.

Exceptional educators were recognized for their achievements on Thursday. Landon Burke got a sneak peek ahead of the Excellence in Education awards ceremony.

Landon: Dr. Tietjen, tell me a little bit about this award ceremony.

Dr. Steve Tietjen: So our program with the Educational Employees Credit Union, we call 'Excellence in Education Awards' here in Merced County, focuses on all levels of employees in our educational system. We try to find people that have really done an outstanding job over the course of the last year in the classified service, the folks that do the cafeteria work, that clean classrooms, that treat people, the front offices, teachers of course, and administrators as well because what we don't do very well in education is we don't say thank you to our own staff. I am just thrilled that we have such a great partner in ECU to allow us to do a ceremony once a year to really spotlight the excellent work our educational employees do here in Merced County.

Joe Doyland: For the past 16 years, the Educational Employees Credit Union has partnered with Merced County Office of Education to provide support for this particular program. It's a great program, and EECU is so thankful that we're able to give them the recognition for these educators throughout Merced County. It's so well deserved and like Steve said, it needs to be done more often, and to give them that recognition and that that honor of excellence in education for teachers, for you know, classified staff those employees, and also, of course, the administrators for Merced County, so it's a, it's a great project. We're very honored to be able to support that.

Joe: You know, under these circumstances, with COVID and everything, just the other day, you know Steve and I went on our little roadshow and we're able to give the honorees a little something and what not and to really be a nice way to do this since we weren't being able to be in contact with everybody for this past, you know 18 months. So able to go out there and present these awards to the individuals, one by one, was really good touch, and I'm thankful for Steve and MCOE than we were able to do that, and EECU can't be more happy to participate in this particular program in that manner.