Santa Margarita teacher awarded for work above and beyond teaching

Creig P. Sherburne/Atascadero News • Donna Robertson has taught with Atascadero Unified School District since 1983, and Santa Margarita Elementary School for the past 16 years. This year, she was honored by the Atascadero Teachers Association for her many years and good deeds with the association.

Dona Robertson was honored with the WHO award — We Honor Ours — by the Atascadero Teachers Association at the Madonna Inn on May 4.

Robertson teaches a fourth- and fifth-grade combo class at Santa Margarita Elementary School and has been involved in the teachers association for at least the past 15 years.

“I’m a little embarrassed about the award because everybody in our district does such a wonderful job,” Robertson said.

It appears she’s more than a little embarrassed. She hadn’t mentioned receiving the award to her coworkers. When it was time to photograph her in her classroom for this article, nobody at the school knew she’d been the recipient.

Robertson’s husband, Randy, is a retired Atascadero Unified School District teacher. He said she was pretty bashful about the whole thing, but it’s just how she is.

The honor was presented at the Channel Islands Service Center Council’s awards banquet at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo before an audience of other teachers association members from school districts from Ventura to San Miguel.

“It’s kind of a cumulative award,” Randy said. “She was vice president of the association and worked on the election campaigns of a couple of board members.”

One of Robertson’s biggest achievements was eliminating boundaries or districts for school board trustees.

It used to be that the school district was broken up into districts. One board member from each district would be elected to the AUSD school board, often unopposed, Randy said, because there simply aren’t a lot of people in Carrisa Plains, for instance, who wanted to run for the office.

“About 12 years ago, there was an initiative on the ballot [that] affected the way in which board members were elected,” Randy said. “She was one of the two or three main people who got it on the ballot and got it passed. We thought as teachers that it would be more fair that way.”

Robertson also served on the teachers association for about 15 years as a building rep — her school’s representative within the association.

“You just make sure that the contract is being followed and teachers are being treated fairly,” Robertson said.

Atascadero Teachers Association President Tracy Ellis-Weit said that Robertson also served as vice president for a few years while the association was in need of folks to assume leadership positions.

“She did not hesitate to fill that role,” Ellis-Weit said at the awards ceremony.

“I’m her husband, obviously, but I think she was a good [vice president],” Randy said. “She didn’t show up, eat a doughnut and go home. … To me, she’s a real opinion leader. And on top of teaching elementary school — which is a lot anyway — someone who does it year in and year out, it’s a lot [of work]. It helps a lot of people. It’s one of those unsung things.”

But thanks to a nomination from a former coworker, her hard work is unsung no more.

“The person who nominated me was Dorothy Wagster,” Robertson said. “I was the representative during that terrible time of pink slips, and she was one of those pink slipped teachers. … She got pink slipped and she had like 10 years [teaching at AUSD]. That she went through all of that and still felt I deserved that honor, that means the most to me. … I’m really relieved that our district, despite the horrible budget news, did not have to do that to anybody this year.”