Benny Westcott
Sweet Home native and former district employee Janice Albert brings community and education experience as a new school board member representing the Liberty District.
Her four-year term began Monday, July 19, shortly after she won an election in which she ran unopposed.
Born and raised in Sweet Home, Albert attended Foster Elementary School, Crawfordsville, and then Sweet Home High School. After graduating, she married and moved to Springfield in 1979, where she lived for 27 years before returning to Sweet Home.
She began her education career in 1987 as a substitute teacher at Springfield’s Thurston Elementary School. Speaking of what got her foot in the door, she said, “When my kids [daughters Tracy and Michelle are now 48 and 42, respectively] started school, I was kind of bored. I was already really involved in my kids’ school, and the principal asked me if I would get on the ‘sub’ list when they needed somebody. And I found I liked it. So it just evolved from there.”
Her first full-time position was as a kindergarten assistant from 1987 to 1989 at Springfield’s Douglas Gardens Elementary School. Then she moved to Elizabeth Page Elementary School from 1989 to 2003, working as a special-education and Title 1 assistant and with autistic students. She followed at Centennial Elementary School as a registrar and secretary.
Upon returning to Sweet Home in 2006, she worked for Hawthorne Elementary School as a Title 1 assistant for a year. Then, the following fall, she became a secretary for the district’s Talented and Gifted Education program (TAG), as well as the special-ed secretary for Sweet Home junior and high schools, a position she kept through 2012. Until 2020, the year she retired, Albert served as the Sweet Home Charter School’s special-education assistant, while maintaining her TAG post.
Albert said the most rewarding part of education work was “seeing the kids when the light bulb comes on and they finally get it. It’s amazing when they can finally read that word that they’ve never been able to read, or be able to say their ABCs. Or something like addition. They never understood it until somehow you were able to put it together for them.
“Another rewarding thing is when a student that you’ve seen go through the school comes back and tells you that it was because of you that they kept going,” she added. “That’s a biggie right there. That’s one when you cry.”
She touched on the importance of school in children’s lives.
“For some of these kids, school is the most positive thing in their life,” she said. “If it wasn’t for you, their life would not be good at all. They wouldn’t have a good place to go if they didn’t have the school and the teachers.”
Albert’s planned to bring her expertise to the board for a long time.
“I’ve wanted to run for the school board for the last 20 years,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to do it, and have always said that when I retired, I wanted to run for school board.”
She noted her relationship with teachers and classified support staff, stressing the importance of understanding what the latter group – which includes cooks, bus drivers, secretaries, maintenance staff, and special-education and Title 1 assistants, among others – deals with.
“I’m hoping that I can bring my experience working as a classified employee all of these years to bring their experiences to the table, when it’s needed, but also understanding what the teachers deal with,” Albert said. “Working in the school district, I kind of understand some of how things work.”
She would like to see “more communication” on the school board.
“I feel like we don’t communicate with the staff as much as we could,” she said. “And I think that a lot of times some of the communication that drifts down to the staff is not accurate. Sometimes the information has changed because it didn’t come straight from the person that maybe it should have come from.
“It’s that whole game where you tell someone something, it goes all the way down the line and then it’s something else when it gets back to you,” she continued. “I think that that happens a lot.”
She also emphasized the importance of “listening to the community. The community is part of who we are too.”
Albert lives with her life partner Terry Lovely, who’s retired after 20 years with the Linn County Road Department.
In her free time, Albert enjoys spending time with her two granddaughters. She loves to read, particularly Janet Lee Carey, mysteries, Westerns, biographies or self-help books. She’s also a Harry Potter fan. “I know I’m too old for it, but that’s just how it is,” she said, laughing.
“I read a little bit of everything,” she added. “If somebody suggests it, I want to read it.”
Albert also likes antiques and vintage items, going to the beach and being with her family.
“When I say family I mean all my extended family, too,” she said. “Brothers and sisters. We all went to school here, and we all graduated from here.”