Our assistant principals are overworked.

This is a problem not just for them and their families. It is also problem for the students who often need to meet with them, but are often faced by closed doors or empty offices instead.

It seems as though assistant principals are typically unavailable when students need to meet with them.. For students this can be more than just a minor inconvenience to not be able to speak with these important people in a timely manner.

In high school, problems can spring up at almost any moment, requiring assistant principals and counselors to respond instantly.

Sometimes these matters can take just a few minutes, but other issues like meeting with a student about a personal matter can require an extended amount of time.

Our assistant principals — and counselors — are  stretched thin as they are pulled in multiple directions at any given moment.

A few of their time consuming activities include performing hundreds of classroom observations, attending special education meetings as well as overseeing graduation plans and course enrollment lists.

The Arts and Humanities Academy and New Tech academies have particularly experienced this problem this year as administrative changes have shuffled administrators around, making it difficult for some students to even know who their assistant principal was.

Even now director  Shawn Mena is overseeing both of these academies after a temporary assistant principal suddenly left Akins in April.

The school district needs to better support the campus-based administrators, allowing them more time to work with students.

Instead of allowing multiple temporary administrators to fill in while the district looked for a permanent principal for Akins, more should have been done to provide stability for students.

The district should hire another administrator to help lighten the load of assistant principals and counselors so they can have more time to work with students.

When students have more time to get to know their principals, it will lead to a better relationship, forming a better environment for students and principals alike.