AUSD has strong hiring year for 2024-25 school year

ATASCADERO — The Atascadero Unified School District (AUSD) Board of Trustees met for its regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 6, at 4 p.m.  

Both the minutes from the June 11 meeting and the Consent Agenda passed unanimously.

Director of Support Services Brant Lloyd addressed the Board of Trustees with a Facilities Update.

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“The facilities department had a very busy couple of months; without staff and students, we were able to get quite a few of our items off of our list checked, which was super nice,” stated Lloyd. “We started with regulatory compliance.”

It also completed many deferred maintenance summer projects, including:

  • Atascadero High School (AHS) road and parking lot resurfacing
  • AHS A building controls
  • AHS building 4000 repairs
  • Tech/ACE parking lot resurfacing
  • STEPS rain gutter replacement
  • Atascadero Middle School (AMS) front park lot resurfacing
  • FAA complete asphalt resurfacing
  • Creston irrigation
  • Tree trimming

“In addition, we continue to provide access control at the high school. This is a project that’s going to take a while because there’s a lot of space to contain there,” stated Lloyd.

The district is also still moving forward on projects that they are in the design stages for and progressing those.

Assistant Superintendant of Human Resources Renee Argain then brought forth the 2024/25 School Year Hiring Update.

“Busy summer in HR. I would say that we had some exciting movement for about six weeks after graduation ended. That next week, we dove into hiring where we needed. Classified and certificated,” said Argain. “We had a lot ofemployees desire to work for our district, which was really exciting.”

The district sometimes had multiple interviews in a day during the hiring process. Argain also gave a shoutout to the administrators that were at the district working during the summer to make sure the positions were filled.

“To do some of that hiring work, we started in the early spring by doing some hiring events. Going to hiring events in our state, recruiting new credentialed employees, and trying to find the best fits for our needs. Our certificated positions that were opening,” added Argain. “We had a hiring event in July that was really successful. We just decided to do one.”

They did on-the-spot interviews at the event in July, which led to some new hires. They also used the district’s online platforms.

“Really excited about where we are this year compared to last year. I feel really confident about all of our employees,” continued Argain. “We had a great new teacher orientation, which you all had come to join and met some of our new certificated employees. I’m just really excited about the new talent we have in our district.” 

The district filled all certificated positions except for two, and only need to hire 1.5 for special services, and still have11 openings in classified.

The next regularly scheduled AUSD Board of Trustees meeting will be on Tuesday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m.