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REACH Award
REACH award winner John Sullivan uses his past to change students’ lives today
John Sullivan became used to a certain routine throughout his childhood.
He would be sitting in yet another new teacher’s class, living with yet another new foster family. There was change, adversity, and constant adjustment in every aspect of his life. He needed someone at school to notice him, to take a genuine interest in him.
John wasn’t a bad kid. But he wasn’t okay, and he needed someone to ask if he was so that all the emotions he had built up had a place to go.
John may not have had that figure at school when he was a child. But today, as a custodian at Northmont Elementary in La Mesa, Calif., he’s that person for hundreds of students every day. It’s why he was selected as the winner of the 2024 Recognizing Excellence and Classified Heroes award, formally accepting the award at a ceremony in Washington D.C. in May.
“I think that what makes this role important is I know what I needed when I was a kid, and what I wasn't getting,” John says today. “I try to remember that each day. Each one of the kids that comes across me knows that I'm going to greet them in the morning. And I think it's important that they know that we care.”
The REACH Award was created by CSEA and the United Classified School Employees, a coalition of state and national unions that together represent school support employees nationwide, to honor the individual contributions, and to recognize the essential role that all education professionals play in education. It is one of the highest honors classified employees can receive.
His job title may be custodian, but it would be an oversimplification of John’s importance to Northmont Elementary to boil his contributions down to one word.
“John uses his powerful story to touch the lives of the children at his school,” La Mesa-Spring Valley Superintendent David Feliciano said. “The fact that he knows he is called to his work and that is so much more than a job. John is proof that all of us who work in schools, regardless of position, can be educators and life changers.”
Beyond what’s written in his job description, John takes on the responsibility of being the first face children see at Northmont when they arrive at school.
“I'm the one that has that first glance that could be the make-or-break whether or not a kid has a positive day,” he said. “They look at us and how we interact with them, how we're acting, whether it's our facial expressions or just our tone. I think that being in the custodial role, it gives me the first chance to be that positive influence on that kid.”
It was the opportunity to fill that role for not just a handful of students but everyone on campus each day that told him he was in the right place. It all began out of a desire to gain experience working with children while studying to become a teacher after leaving the Navy.
“While I was going to school to become a teacher, I fell in love with being a custodian,” he said. “I felt like I was wasting my time going to school to teach because I’d already found where I was supposed to be.”
John is the first to point out that he’s not the only classified employee who goes the extra mile for their students. But there is only one John Sullivan and only one person who could create the kind of welcoming and safe atmosphere students at Northmont Elementary have.
“I just happen to be the one that got recognized this year,” he demurs. “But there's hundreds of people, thousands of people that deserve this award, that do exactly what I do on a daily basis with smiles on their faces. It's just a humbling experience to be able to represent custodians.”