001All right, this is Superintendent Jeremy Kais. I'm here with our board president, Stephen Chapman, to talk about the upcoming board meeting. All right, Stephen, our first thing leading off is our normal opening of a meeting with call to order, pledge allegiance, land acknowledgement, and the the approval of the regular agenda. But then we get into celebrations. >> Yeah. Uh celebrations, we got two this uh two this week. Uh we're doing our public relations and marketing department uh has won a ton of awards. We're going to celebrate the team for all the work they've done in telling our story um across the district and across the state. Um and then we'll be celebrating West Point High School uh this week, the Dragons. Uh Brandy Haskins and her team will be sharing all sorts of fun stuff.
002It's always nice to see what kind of surprises they bring to the to the board meeting. So, it's going to be exciting. >> All right. Then we'll go into our regular superintendent updates, board updates, public participation, and then we get into a list of information discussion items. >> Yeah. Uh lots of great stuff to talk about. Uh we're going to have a couple of our national board certified teachers actually share about the national board certification. Uh the training program that uh they're running. Um we do have a new teacher this year that's uh been nationally board certified and a bunch of folks that are putting in for it for next year and renewals. Uh so they're going to talk about that's going to be exciting. Um we're going to have our discussion on our meet
003confer recommendations. Um our district has a meet and confer policy. Some districts do meet and furb space negotiating. Uh gosh, 10 years ago, uh now uh Vice President Delasio and myself co-drafted a meet conf and fur policy working with our staff to make sure that everyone has a voice at the table when we're deciding um you know the trajectory of our district which has been very helpful. We've seen the progress that we've made academically, paywise, retention wise. Um it's all due to things like Mink Confer which has been really cool. And you've been a part of those the last six years now. Uh I think nine yeah at this point >> it's been a while. Uh no and no spoilers this year. So we're not telling the Rays. Everybody is gonna have to actually tune
004in to that meeting to to see what the raises for next year. Uh but then after meeting confer we're going to go into uh high school number eight update and community concerns and followup. >> Yeah. Uh no. Uh we're going to reveal all the cool stuff for uh school number eight. We're building in Avidale over by the racetrack. So tune in for that meeting. It's definitely going to be uh exciting to see the uh school name, school logo, and and where we are in the progress with that. Uh it's a great project. Looking forward to it. And then our community concerns follow up. We heard some uh feedback from our folks at the last couple of board meetings. We're just going to share some updates on on uh those projects. Very consistent new practice with
005that with if if the concern is voiced in the in the board meeting. We got the feedback before that they'd like to hear the response also come to them through a board meeting. So, so good to see that continuing. Uh, then we'll have the consent agenda. Nothing out of the ordinary with the consent agenda. These are the normal things that we usually have on each meeting. A long list of action items though, eight of them. A lot of these tied into me confer. You want to kick it off at the top? We got benefits. >> Yeah. Uh, so we'll just do uh we'll see a presentation, get learn information about basically um the employee benefits that we'll be offering this year. I hear there's a couple of uh new benefits in there that are going
006to be uh fun to share. our employee compensation uh for the year as well as our uh uh salary placement schedules for all the positions that we offer. Uh a couple of new positions in uh key departments across our district to make sure that we're operating efficiently. Uh telling our story uh and serving our staff, students in our community to the best of our ability. Uh so we'll have some uh new positions for folks to come join us and help the TOS High School District community. Um as well as approving work calendars for um all those individuals. And then we'll be hearing from our uh principal of al alternatives programs uh is going to share the uh mission and vision of the lighthouse academy and the contin education academy. Um and we'll be approving those
007officially at the meeting as well. Uh do you want to kind of talk about I know we're going to get into the numbers but just kind of like what we're doing with the raises this year because I know it's a little bit different this year because of the override. >> It is it is different this year. So, this is the the first year um after 10 years of being on the ballot that that uh we've lost uh on the election. So, the previous nine years, we always passed every question we brought forward. So, it's a little bit different feel this year when uh when we're when we're looking at a um our resources being diminished by that that loss at the election. So on the placement salary schedule as an example, something you'll see at
008the meeting is the recommendation will actually be to hold all the placement schedules and not necessarily give any increases to the placement schedules because placement schedules are for recruiting. We're doing very well recruiting and and really there is this overall focus on these items of putting all of our efforts towards taking care of existing staff and addressing compensation issues for existing staff. I think that's going to see that's going to be the theme that you will feel throughout this meeting is is a focus on let's take care of our existing staff and and do things that can take care of all staff. Um so that focus on compensation and not as much as as all the individual and targeted things that we typically have been doing for these last few years. It's going to be
009more narrowed on the focus. >> Yeah. Know and and I think that's important. I mean obviously we've seen our retention rate uh you know drastically increase over the years to uh you know well into the you know upper 90%. Um, but these are the folks to take care of our students in our community every day. Uh, because of the investments we've been able to make uh over the last uh, you know, nine years. We now have 3A schools, a couple of schools, you know, on the cusp. Um, all of our schools are A and B. Um, our district is doing solid. So, um, even with the override, we're still making investments into our current staff because I know they're going to still take us to to the next level academically for our students. So, um
010I am pleased to see the work that uh uh you and the mink confer committee have have done this year and certainly budgeting over the last 10 years with us. >> So, definitely some big amount announcements coming this Tuesday. We'll see you out there. >> All right, we'll see you on Tuesday at 6 PM here at the district office in the boardroom. Thank you.