At the Monday, June 5 meeting of the Berkeley County Board of Education, Aimee Fulmer could be seen smiling from a distance. She was approached by community members, teachers and district personnel and greeted with kind words. It was one of life’s happy moments.
She said she was “home.”
During the meeting, Fulmer was approved by the Board as the Chief Officer of Human Resources. The move brings her back to the school district where she began her career and spent nearly all of her 26 years in education.
With so much time spent in BCSD, it’s understandable that she has a passion for the school district, its employees and its students. She will tell you that she’s nearly done it all in those 26 years – from teaching, to a role as a teacher evaluator, to school administrative roles and eventually time in the central office as a member of the superintendent’s cabinet. She’s been responsible for administrative services, student assignment and elementary school supervision.
Those experiences are among the reasons she steadfastly believes she is poised to lead the district’s human resources office. She also cites the 2022-2023 school year she spent teaching in Charleston County.
“I spent a year teaching in a 5th grade classroom,” she said. “I had been out of the classroom for 20 years and certainly did not know the current classroom climate. I believe that this experience has given me insight into the needs for successful retention and recruitment of teachers.”
Recruitment and retention will be Fulmer’s immediate focus. She realizes there is a hiring crisis impacting schools all over the country.
“We cannot continue to ignore this impact on our students when we cannot recruit and retain our current teaching staff,” Fulmer said. “…I look forward to seeing the employees of BCSD finding their niche and being where they want to be, doing what they want to do and doing it to the best of their ability.”
BCSD Superintendent Dr. Anthony Dixon said the District is also making several changes to support Fulmer’s immediate objectives.
“We can no longer approach some problems the way we did decades ago,” Dixon said. “We are and will continue working on employee incentives, increases in pay and career advancement opportunities. To assist Ms. Fulmer, we have named a director for retention and recruitment -- that may be a first in our district. The point is, we need to focus on the culture of the organization and that responsibility does not lie alone with the human resources office.”
Fulmer also plans to implement process and support improvement measures in the HR office. Among the values she holds for the department is a commitment to employees being served to the absolute best that resources and capacity will allow.
“We want to be here for our employees so you can be here for our product, the students,” she said.
Fulmer will assume the Chief Officer of Human Resources role on July 1.