The lowest bidder that met the bid requirements was CONINX in the amount of 339,220.81 and administration would recommend your approval. I would add to that recommendation that these serving lines would go into place in December over winter break provided the production of these lines, the customization of these lines stays on timeline and on target. And the new lines will provide for greater flexibility, efficiency, and food options for kids, including regular salad bar, burger line for kids. um just greater menu options overall. So this is a great development for the high school and again administration would recommend your approval.

I'm super excited. We had uh one, two, three. I'm seeing five bids here and four of them were extremely competitive, very close. Um it looks like we did really well here. And I know with a with a high schooler and having two kids recently graduated that this is going to be a huge benefit to the high school, especially with the new schedule and just the amount of time that that students are given for lunch. This is going to help move things along.

a movement from $150 per day to $170 per day will put us in a much more competitive situation. Every time we leave uh a we're not able to find a substitute teacher, we're leaning on our classroom teachers to cover those uncovered classrooms. In those cases, classrooms are splitting kids. So, increasing class size at the elementary level. At the secondary level, teachers are giving up their prep time to cover for uncovered classrooms.

if I'm hearing that the board tonight uh we'd like administration to monitor this and to let us know if obtaining substitutes continues to be a problem. If it is, we need to take another closer look at this policy and see if we need to uh um increase the rate yet again. Um, I don't think there's anybody at this table here that would disagree that uh compensation for staff is probably one of the most critical things that we can consider and it's one of the uh easiest ways that we can uh help ensure that we have quality educators for all of our students and that and that is of critical importance.

And in a similar fashion, we're recommending an increase in the substitute rate of pay for classified staff. They're paid on an hourly basis. Currently at $14 an hour. Uh this recommendation would be to move that to $15 per hour for those positions listed. Um it would increase the health office assistant LPN again $1 from $19 to $20. Otherwise, most of those rates would move by all those rates would move by $1 per hour. And administration would recommend your approval.

Well I would just like to say I think these positions um struggle with subs. I mean teachers struggle with subs but these positions I mean food service um paras noon duty all you know so this this is um a welcome change I mean it's you know it's incremental as we spoke about but um these positions are really hard to get um um subs for as well and as long as I'm speaking I I will we should have a roll call on this

So this one I think we've really worked to bring up because this looks really low to me still. I mean, I feel like these are all important roles and these need to be paid more than this. While I'm glad for the raise, as member Christensen said, I just still think that this is astoundingly low to me. I think that I mean, you can work at Quick Trip and make just about the same as some of these dollar amounts.

I'm really really tempted to make an amendment here this evening, but um I think we need to do further analysis before we do that. And uh I I think that the first couple of months of the school year will help us with that. So if I'm if I'm hearing the board here, I I think what I'd like to propose to Dr. Massie and administration is that they do a little bit more of this analysis that we asked for this evening, especially on the classified um help us understand how we compare, how this compares with our full-time staff and then uh bring it back to us maybe as early as October uh for reconsideration.