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“The logistics of opening three new
schools – it goes beyond Construction
Services. HR must hire all new people
and transfer people who are within the
District. Finance and purchasing have to
procure furniture, technology, text books,
library books, and other materials. Risk
management has to provide additional
insurance for the new facilities,” Dreger
explains, continuing, “So it’s really the
whole entire School District preparing for
this monumental task.”
Dreger is a Manatee County local, having
attended Bayshore High School before
earning her Building Construction degree
at the University of Florida. She has been
with the School District for 15 years. She
says working for MCSD is a great way
to put her skills to use, while remaining
in her community. “It’s a way for me to
do really cool, big construction projects
without leaving the county. I had kids, so
travelling for construction was no longer
an option for me,” she says with a laugh.
Her children – a son, 25, and daughter,
22 – also attended schools in Manatee
County. They both went to Abel Elementary
and Harllee Middle School, then her son
attended Bayshore High School for their
dual enrollment program with SCF, while
her daughter attended Braden River
High School. Her son went on to earn a
biomedical degree from the University
of Central Florida and currently works
for the Roskamp Institute. Her daughter
currently attends Vanderbilt University
in Nashville. She anticipates having
grandchildren in the school district before
too long. Speaking with Dreger, it is clear
how proud she is of her children and how
much her family means to her.
It is also clear how much she loves what
she does. “When my job gets stressful,”
Dreger says, “my favorite thing to do
is to go to the job sites. Just to see it
happening and to know that we started
with an empty lot and we’re going to end
with a school that students will be in for
50-plus years. That’s pretty exciting. So,
when people ask me what I do, I don’t say
‘I’m the Director of Construction Services
for the Manatee School District…’ I say,
‘I build schools.’ And people are excited;
that’s pretty cool!”