WPS Division Director of Operations wins Excellence in Public Service Award
Fabian Armendariz, Division Director of Operations for the Wichita Public Schools, received the 2022 Excellence in Public Service Award from the Wichita Public Schools.
Now in its 34th year, the award recognizes employees from the City of Wichita, Sedgwick County and Wichita Public Schools who exhibit the highest standard of service on the job and through their volunteerism.
The winners each receive $2,500 from the DeVore Foundation.
Armendariz leads a division which oversees transportation, student nutrition, supply and the district’s central print center.
Wendy Johnson, division director of Strategic Communications, who nominated Armendariz for the award, highlighted his vision and deep commitment to support students and staff when schools closed at the start of the pandemic.
“While we had a model for distribution thanks to the district’s annual summer food program, the volume of distribution was unprecedented since eligibility was opened up to any child under the age of 18 in Wichita,” Johnson said. “He and his team worked hard to push a system that wasn’t designed for distribution at this scale.”
Armendariz also supported the district’s print services team who worked with district leaders to create a massive system of paper learning materials for distribution for PreK-12 students prior to the district’s rollout of one-to-one technology for students. His commitment to the community has also been a defining characteristic.
Armendariz and his family immigrated to the U.S. when he was a child and he grew up in Salina. After high school, he came to Wichita and began working for the school district supporting parents and families in high-need communities. He has served as the voice of the district for our Spanish-speaking communities and continues to be an advocate for them. He has served in a variety of roles within the district for 22 years.
His community work includes fundraising for Alzheimer’s Disease, which has had an impact on his husband’s family, and with the Wichita River Festival, where he advocated for the festival to be more inclusive of Spanish-speaking residents.
For the past several years, he has served as a volunteer on the festival’s operations committee. He took on more responsibilities within the festival, leading the food service function for all concert performers, helped select performers and was invited to join the festival’s board of directors, where he has continued to advocate for inclusion based on culture, language and gender orientation.
Armendariz has also been recognized within the community professionally by the Wichita Business Journal as an influential young leader, with the Innovations in Business in Award by the Young Professionals of Wichita for the creative delivery of breakfast meals to students and was selected as a member of Leadership Wichita.
Click here to watch a video of the surprise presentation.
Posted April 28, 2022
