In August, Allan McGurk started as the school’s new campus supervisor. His job mostly involves school safety in normal times, but he is now supervising the first small group of students to return to in-person learning in what is called Phase 2A. 

 Students meet in the library and range from those struggling with remote learning to others who have had power outages, unreliable internet or computer problems. 

McGurk’s role is to ensure that COVID-19 guidelines are maintained and that they have the resources they need for learning. He also directs students to the IT person on campus to help with internet connection issues and give them headphones. 

“The students have everything they need, and we all want them to have success,” McGurk said.

McGurk started his career in corporate real estate management before working as a football coach at Los Gatos High School. In 2015, he was diagnosed with cancer and stopped working full time. He has been free of cancer for five years. 

In 2019, McGurk started part-time work as one of three campus supervisors at Los Gatos and said he realized that he loved being back at work. Afterwards, he started looking for full-time employment. 

During his time at Los Gatos, McGurk heard great things about Saratoga High from assistant principal Brian Thompson, a factor that motivated him to apply for the job at SHS when it opened after former campus supervisors Mark Hernandez and Helen Jarrett left the positions in June.

He said he has enjoyed working here so far. 

Ultimately, McGurk’s aims to provide a sense of normalcy to students by being back on campus. He understands that many students don’t work as well from home, so he hopes they will do better by coming back to school. 

“I am looking forward to meeting more students and staff and building relationships of trust and cooperation,” McGurk said. “The interaction with the students has been positive, and I am looking forward to the next phases when more students return on a regular basis.”