Bill Kralovec, School Director
Tashkent International School (TIS)
TIS engaged Jon and GSO to perform a scan on the quality, completeness, and efficacy of our policies and procedures. Through his thorough examination and meticulous attention to detail, we discovered that there were many aspects not documented that needed attention, which he did. What this produced was a new foundation for the school that leveraged his own good historical policy intellectual property and added significant best practices that have strengthened TIS's operations - both educationally and non-educationally.
We've also targeted our topics to appropriate audiences in more digitized and intentional ways, which retired the large "manuals" and "handbooks" that we previously used. He worked very effectively and positively with all of our critical stakeholders across the school to deliver clarity into their spaces.
In performing this thorough foundational work via the operational policy focus, he also surfaced the condition that much of the Board of Trustee function had been interwoven into the operational policies. Jon offered his expertise in crafting a completely new Board-Level Governance policy which has positioned the Board to be far more strategically focused (as many Boards are), but operationally aware.
In really getting to know our school, it became very apparent that TIS could no longer continue to operate in a fully manual manner regarding Admissions and Enrolment Management. Because of his prior leadership experience as a CFO/COO/Director of Admissions, he was able to design and implement a fully digital experience that integrated with our learning management systems, set up our thinly staffed Admissions/IT Teams (and collective stakeholders) for greater efficiency with each other and families, but allow myself and the leadership team/Board to understand our position as a school and strategic needs through data analytics that we can produce (and customize) at our fingertips. This will be a game-changer for TIS.
Through all of this work, I had weekly meetings with Jon where we discussed a wide range of related and other topics that have informed my leadership thinking, served as intelligent guidelines for where we may want to go as a school, and surfaced some other immediate opportunities in our non-educational areas that we have taken steps to evolve, or are considering for the future improvement of the school.
He also greatly assisted in vetting new leadership, working to solidify salary scales, and offering his own connections for strategic initiatives we've undertaken. As a long-term partner for me, I will continue to talk with him long after GSO's engagement with TIS to capitalize on our good experience, but also as a great partner in strategic thinking.