General News
19 June, 2026
Tracey recognised for 40 years’ service
Maryborough local Tracey Smith has been recognised for 40 years of service to Victoria's public education system.
Maryborough’s Tracey Smith has been recognised for four decades of service to Victoria’s public education recently.
Mrs Smith was among teachers and support staff recognised at the annual Recognition of Service awards late last month.
Hers is a journey that spans the amalgamation of education in Maryborough over recent decades.
Mrs Smith attended Maryborough Technical College between 1977 to 1982 before moving to Bendigo for work.
She would later return because her soon-to-be husband was a farmer in the area.
“It brought me back to town and it put me in the school where I had not long left as a student,” she said.
Her work as assistant registrar included managing the pay of people who were her teachers only a few short years before.
“It took a lot to adjust because I could not get used to actually calling them by their first names and some I still never did,” she said.
In 1994, Mrs Smith’s first merger took place forming the Maryborough Regional College.
This doubled the number of campuses and staff which were her responsibility as the school’s new business manager.
In this role, Mrs Smith said she managed the school’s finances which, later in her career, would see annual budgets of tens of millions of dollars.
The next merger happened in the early 2000s when a number of schools combined to become the Maryborough Education Centre.
Mrs Smith said this made things more complex with over 200 staff involved in a staged relocation to the current campus.
It’s just one example among many of how Mrs Smith’s work challenges her.
“I love the variety of my job. No day is ever the same, no day is ever boring, I learn something every day, and I never get to complete my to-do list,” she said.
Alongside her full-time work, Mrs Smith said she volunteered to organise the Support Staff Conference, for non-teaching and business manager roles, for the Loddon-Mallee region.
Mrs Smith said she did this for 23 years to help give her colleagues professional development opportunities.
“I wanted to make sure people had an opportunity to develop themselves,” she said.
Later, as the industry changed, she volunteered with the Association of Business Managers in Victorian State Schools.
Mrs Smith said that within two months she was the vice-president of primary which lasted 17 years.
“I decided to volunteer and do that to continue providing learning opportunities and developing colleagues in my field,” she said.
This organisation was later renamed to Business Managers Victoria (BMV) which Mrs Smith became the president of in 2023.
“I never thought in a million years when I started that I would have stayed at the school that long but I absolutely have loved every minute of my role,” she said.
“I often miss that but I love what I’m doing even more now.”
BMV is the peak professional association supporting business managers and senior education support staff responsible for business, administration, finance and personnel management in Victoria’s state schools.
As president, Mrs Smith has continued offering professional learning opportunities for her colleagues as well as growing the organisation.
Mrs Smith said, since she started, they’ve grown from 750 to 1200 members.
It’s a career trajectory Mrs Smith said she could never have imagined and one she was happy to be recognised for.
“It was nice to be formally recognised for the loyalty and the service that I’ve done but I really hope that I’ve made a difference in my journey to a lot of people along the way,” she said.
“I’d like to think I’ve made a huge impact and I can continue to do that.”