The Engine That Runs The School
When you walk into the front office, you first see Mrs. Lisa Neubauer. She is the main communicator for Moeller High School, her phone rings constantly as during this short interview she received three phone calls. Then if you are late to school you go to the left side of the office to see Mrs. Lisa McAlpine, who will give you your tardy note to get into class. If you were bold enough to park illegally, you head to the right of the office and talk with Mr. Jerry Beitman, who is the head of Moeller security.
Mrs. Neubauer is a former teacher at St. Vincent . She retired from teaching, but when former principal Blane Collison, one her former coworkers at St. Vincent, offered her a position at Moeller High School she happily accepted and soon started in this new position. Her typical day at Moeller consists of a lot of communication with parents, students, and anyone else who happens to call or walk into the building. She also helps answer questions from current students, teachers, the lunch ladies, and administrators. Numerous amounts of people came into the office during The Moeller Crusader’s interview to ask about different activities going on around school.
More recently, she has been working to get accreditation, which is getting the state to approve the goals to improve the school in order to stay open. This takes up a lot of her time, as it is a long and tedious process that requires a lot of communication. One of her favorite parts of the office is being able to celebrate State Championships with the students. Both Mrs. Neubauer and Mrs. McAlpine have extremely enjoyed following the success of the basketball team in recent years. Mrs. Neubauer says that some of the parent phones calls have been so funny and the phone calls have brightened her day.
Mrs. McAlpine had two sons that graduated from Moeller High School, and she has been heavily involved with Moeller ever since. Her daily routine consists of dealing with all the attendance and conduct of the Moeller students. She is the one who has to know where every student is at all times during the day in case of emergency. She sends the beloved green notes, which allow you to leave school early. Mrs. McAlpine is the last friendly face you see and receive a ‘good luck’ from before heading into Mr. Shaffer’s office for disciplinary reasons. Tracking students throughout the day, the comings and goings-mostly the students leaving for the day-takes up the most time in her day.
When asked her least favorite part of her job she jokingly said getting to know the students, but she also cited getting to know the students as the best part of her job. Her actual least favorite part of the job is having to wake up early in the morning, but she has enjoyed every moment she has spent at Moeller. “The Moeller Family makes Moeller such a special place. And you get to see it as the students grow up and graduate,” Mrs. McAlpine said with a smile. She has had a lot of funny moments at Moeller as well, because she gets to firsthand deal with teenagers every day. One of the funniest thing that has happened to her in this job is receiving parent notes on napkins, McDonald’s receipts, yes, even on a bank deposit slip.
Mr. Beitman, a ’76 Moeller graduate, also had two brothers that went to Moeller High School. His favorite part about Moeller while he was in attendance was the people he went to school with and now his favorite part about Moeller is the people he works with, especially in the front office. His typical day at Moeller requires an early wake-up call, because he gets here at 6:45 every day to check his email and start some work before going outside to be visible to the arriving students until 7:50 in the morning. At this time, he goes to the All Saints parking lot to help them with their traffic control until 8:05 and heads back across the parking lot to Moeller.
In the first semester, there is a high chance he then would start to set up for drug testing and prepping for ALICE Training. If it were more towards the middle of the year of second semester drug testing does not happen as often and he gets more time to be out and about around school. He hates giving out detentions to the Moeller students. “Surprising, isn’t it?” commented Beitman about dishing out the DT’s.
Being able to interact with fellow staff or faculty members and students makes his job so great. He also enjoys his job because he gets to deal with something new every day. “I’m not sure how they got there but I once found myself getting a students keys down from a tree one day,” said Beitman. Sometimes he even jumps in on the fun; last year he was approached by two brothers who told him their keys had been ‘stolen’ by a former Moeller student Ben Edgar. Edgar, class of ’18, proceeded to move the brother’s car from the front lot to the side of the parking lot. Beitman then called Edgar down to his office to prank him by giving him a fake blue slip and a couple of fake detentions.
The hustle and bustle of the front office is one of the most important parts of the school. Mr. Shaffer is on record saying, “The front office is the engine that runs the school.” But there are many more people who help make the front office run, including Principal Carl Kremer, Dean of Students Mr. Shaffer, Dean of Academics, Dr. Brookbank, and receptionist Ann Niehaus. Without out all of these hardwordking people in the front office, Moeller would not open in the morning and close at night. They all stated that one of the all-time best things about their job is working with each other. They have plenty of time to “counter talk” as they call it. They also get to eat lunch with each other every day and because of all of this they all have become close friends. They are the engine that this school could not run without.