New health clerk and supervisor aims to be positive presence on campus

Photo by Will Norwood

New health clerk and campus supervisor Tammy Parris gets ready for lunch duty.

Tammy Paris began working part-time last year as a health clerk at both Saratoga and Los Gatos High. Over the summer, Parris was hired for a full time position as the new school health clerk and campus supervisor at SHS.

 Previously, Parris had jobs in the health-care industry for over a decade. Her new position is the first time she has worked at a school. 

Parris has lived in many different states, including Florida, Texas, Missouri and primarily Arkansas. There, she was an office manager and a nurse, focusing on plastic surgery for cancer patients. 

In early 2020, Parris moved to the Bay Area with her husband, who needed to relocate for work. After spending a couple of years at home to take care of her newborn daughter, she heard that the school was looking for a new health clerk and campus supervisor and applied for the job.

Parris said that one of the challenges of her new job is that she has to balance the duties of both a health clerk and campus supervisor. 

“Eighty-five percent of the work I have to do at the school is for my job as a nurse and the remaining fifteen percent is for campus supervisor,” Parris said. “The only thing that the administrators call me for is medical emergencies. I don’t have any complaints about the traffic and lunch duty that I have to do every day.”

As a health clerk, she tends to work closely with many other staff members. Attendance manager Mandy Armes updates Parris on which students are absent and principal Greg Louie’s secretary, Alison Montgomery, keeps Parris up to date on campus happenings. Robert Wise, the school’s registrar, gives Parris the records of new students and gets rid of old records when necessary. 

Parris said she wants to make the health office a comfortable environment that students can come to whenever they need help. 

“Everyone is afraid to come over to the health office and afraid to come out and talk if they need to, but I want people to feel like this is a safe place that they can come to,” she said. “It would be great if students wanted to stop by and offer their opinions for what they think would improve or make them feel more comfortable about coming over to the health office.”

She hopes to create a lasting impact on the school and wants to stay here for the foreseeable future, as she enjoys her current position. Since Parris has worked many different jobs in several states, there have been many different and unique environments that she has witnessed — the environment at the school so far has been one of her favorites.

“I like it here,” she said. “I live nearby, so it’s easy for me to get here in the morning. The staff and parents here are extremely friendly and easy to work with for the most part. There are probably jobs where you can make a lot more money, but I am happy with my current position.”