If Veronica Rodriguez is not huddled in Palo Alto High School’s 400s printing center, she can be seen bouncing around Paly, hand-delivering the copies to teachers. Rodriguez is the mastermind behind all paper handouts at Paly. As the school’s reproduction technician, she prints every test, review packet and resource teachers need to carry out their lesson plans effectively. She works for every academic department along with the College and Career Center.
Rodriguez has worked at Paly for over 22 years, but the journey to get to where she stands today has not been easy.
“I immigrated to the United States in 1989 and I came here looking for better opportunities to help my family in Mexico, because we are very poor over there,” Rodriguez said.
When Rodriguez left Mexico, the unemployment rate in her country was 2.93%, a relatively low number and similar to today’s rates. However, the economy was less secure. At the time, the GDP was three times lower than Mexico’s current GDP. Rodriguez had to leave behind her mother, brother and relatives in Mexico after trying and failing to find a job in Mexico that could leverage her engineering degree.
“Here in America, when you do things in the right way, you can have opportunities for very many jobs,” Rodriguez said. “In Mexico, we didn’t have many job opportunities.”
Starting over in America meant coming as an immigrant. She applied for U.S. citizenship after living in America for a few years. Rodriguez’s first job in America was a manufacturing job at Bay Precision in Livermore, California. At Bay Precision, she utilized her engineering skills and learned how to operate heavy machinery. The skills she developed there still apply to her position as a reproduction technician at Paly because Rodriguez helps fix the printers when they break down. In February, Rodriguez received the news that her position as copy technician was going to be discontinued in the Palo Alto Unified School District.
“I felt very devastated, very sad,” Rodriguez said. “I couldn’t sleep for a few days, until we had the meeting and they rejected cutting my position.”
Teachers were quick to respond to PAUSD plans to cut the reproduction technician position Paly and Gunn High School due to budget cuts. The news broke on a Friday and by the following Monday, Paly representatives of the Palo Alto Educators’ Association had swiftly created a petition that gained over 100 teacher signatures in favor of keeping Rodriguez’s role.
Rodriguez had cultivated in-depth relationships with teachers across Paly, but she never expected such widespread support from her peers. Advanced Placement Capstone teacher Lucy Filppu has known Rodriguez for over 10 years. During this recent unsettling time, she helped support Rodriguez with whatever she needed.
“If I had to pick one employee on the campus who’s the most beloved and necessary, she’s probably up there at the very top,” Filppu said. “It was easy to come together. Everybody wanted to come together.”
On Feb. 11, Rodriguez found out her role was reinstated through an email sent by the district. While her work is behind the scenes, no one can deny the integral part Rodriguez plays in keeping classrooms afloat.
“People who don’t work inside the high school don’t know how the school runs,” Rodriguez said. “But teachers who work daily in the school know how important it is to have a [copy] technician.”
