Sunny Hills Employees of the Year were recognized earlier this month during the regularly scheduled board meeting at the district office.

“The district people didn’t really know me too well, but it was nice getting congratulations from people I didn’t know,” said science teacher Alexander Hua, who earned the majority of votes from faculty and staff to become the school’s 2024-2025 teacher of the year. “Getting any kind of recognition is nice.”

Also recognized for the non-teaching Employee of the Year honor during the Tuesday, May 13, board meeting was Randy Avalos, the school’s campus supervisor liaison.

“There’s a lot of other employees here, so the number just didn’t quite match up for me to think about ever being Employee of the Year,” said Avalos, who’s also the Lancers’ assistant baseball coach. “There are other great employees besides me.”

Avalos and Hua were officially recognized at Sunny Hills during break on Friday, Jan. 24, in the staff lounge.

When principal Craig Weinreich called Avalos’ name as one of the winners, the campus supervisor said he felt surprised and appreciative.

“I didn’t think I would be anywhere near getting that,” said Avalos, who was hired for the 2022-2023 year. “But now, I feel like I’m honored.”

Similarly, the chemistry instructor said he felt happy and accomplished and saw it as a recognition of his hard work in the nine years he has taught at Sunny Hills.

“It’s very validating that a lot of the extra work I do outside of teaching gets noticed,” Hua said. “I spent a lot of hours doing eSports and Science Olympiad, and so for me, it kind of validates all that time I put in and the weekends that I spend into these extracurriculars.”

HOW IT WORKS

To earn this annual honor, SH faculty and staff are given nearly a week in January to submit nominations for the award through a Google Form, principal’s secretary Patty Johnson said. After the nomination period ends, Johnson then sends out a list of nominees for employees on campus to vote on — one for teacher of the year and one for non-teaching staff of the year. 

According to the list of nominated statements, Avalos received two; Johnson said the nominees have always remained anonymous.

One of the statements about Avalos reads: “Randy has been extremely helpful in his transition from campus safety to assisting with custodial work in the spring and summer, to his new role in campus safety. … Always helpful, always has a good attitude.”

The second reads: “Hard worker and always going above and beyond.”

In response to such nominations, Avalos said he appreciated his fellow staff members noticing his work ethic and actions.

“I don’t really want to say that I go above and beyond,” he said. “If people notice that I do, that’s great because I don’t try to go above and beyond; honestly, it comes from my heart.”

Weinreich offered similar thoughts in response to Avalos’ recognition.

“Mr. Avalos does a great job as a campus supervisor liaison,” he said. “He’s a leader; he helps coach on campus as well, and he just gets to know our students well and forms really good, positive connections with them.”

Hua, on the other hand, received three nominations out of the 10 submitted.

One recommendation reads: “Alex is a great teacher and mentor to the students. He always has time to help students study and learn whenever he is needed.”

Hua said he appreciated the three sentiments from his co-workers.

“I’m glad that other teachers recognize the things I do outside of the core subject,” he said.

AVALOS’ BEGINNING

The campus supervisor liaison started as a staff member of Buena Park High School in 2018. However, he said he wanted to strive for more, and after seeing the baseball team’s assistant coach position being offered at Sunny Hills, he knew he had to seize the opportunity.

“My goal was to always try to get a job at Buena Park, being that I graduated from there back in 2011,” Avalos said. “When [the SH job] opportunity came up, I took advantage of it, and then I just said, ‘You know what, the best thing to do is try to get a job here as a coach.’”

He was hired as a campus supervisor in the 2022-2023 school year and obtained his wanted assistant coach position in the preceding year.

However, this wasn’t enough as Avalos said he wanted to help the school through a custodial position — a role that involves cleaning and keeping the campus in a clean condition — working during the summer and applying for the same position for the 2024-2025 school year. 

But his fate led him to a different path: the liaison position, a campus supervisor position monitoring students and enforcing school rules.

“I didn’t go in with the intentions of me getting it, but I just kind of showed them what I had,” Avalos said. “I’m not necessarily disappointed; I’m happy because one door closes, another one opens, and the opportunity for me to be the liaison of Sunny Hills actually has worked out better for me.”

The supervisor said he is striving to further improve his career.

“As cheesy as it sounds, I think the sky’s the limit — always try to move up and do something else,” he said. “I’m not content with just being a campus liaison; the next goal is whatever opportunity opens up, and then I will gladly try to take advantage of that.”

Sophomore Dallas Girod, one of the baseball players, said he is deserving of the assistant coach’s honor.

“He’s able to make friends well, he’s very kind, and he has a good personality,” Girod said. “When we would do competitions, he would give us Gatorade at the end; he really pushes us to be the best.”

Junior Marilyn Rodriguez, who met Avalos as a freshman and has known him for three years, also offered praise for Avalos’ accomplishment.

“He is a very hard-working person and is always willing to help someone out,” Rodriguez said. “For me, specifically, he has encouraged me to be a better person and focus on school.

“He has also helped me with things I have gone through in the past and provided me with advice.”

THE START OF HUA’S CAREER

As for Hua, he started teaching chemistry at Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnets, a high school in Los Angeles in the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, leaving after two years.

The teacher soon transitioned to getting hired here during the 2015-2016 school year, also teaching chemistry and adding honors chemistry to his course load.

Besides being the adviser for Super Smash Bros club since the fall of 2021, Hua serves as the Science Olympiad adviser since the 2020-2021 school year, taking over from science teacher Christopher Ghareebo.

He plans to continue teaching at Sunny Hills, not imagining a future elsewhere.

“I feel like to me, this has been a dream job,” Hua said. “Not only teaching science but being able to share my other passions like comic books and video games with my students — I can’t really imagine a better job than this, and the community is really amazing.”