Photo by Jon Anderson
Jeremy Vice, a Riverchase resient and assistant vice president for Prime Therapeutics, is joining the Hoover Board of Education on June 1.
Riverchase resident Jeremy Vice has lived in Hoover for 27 years and served five years on the city’s Parks and Recreation Board.
Now, he’s preparing for a new role — Hoover school board member. Vice on June 1 will take the place of Kermit Kendrick, who is rolling off the school board after eight years of service there.
Vice, 51, has worked for Prime Therapeutics since 2010. For the past four years, he has been an assistant vice president at the pharmacy benefit management company. He also spent 11 years with CVS Caremark, giving him a total of 26 years in health care and pharmacy management.
He said his experience in budgeting, financial planning, and managing customer needs will benefit the board. At Prime Therapeutics, Vice leads a team managing more than $21 billion in spending, according to his school board application.
He said he aims to work collaboratively with other board members to meet the school system’s needs.
Vice said the most important issue he sees facing the school system is making sure it stays well-positioned to continue to attract and hire talented people and providing the resources and training that employees need, whether they are teachers, administrators or support personnel.
When asked what he thought about building a third high school, Vice said school officials should make sure they are maximizing the existing capacity they have in schools before building a third high school.
Vice also said the school board needs to do all it possibly can to make progress on the issues identified in the decades-old desegregation lawsuit and demonstrate that progress to the federal court.
During his interview with the City Council, Councilman John Lyda asked Vice if he believes the school system has adequate funding and is meeting the needs of Hoover students, and if not, where would he advise the school board turn for additional funding.
Vice said his experience has been that Hoover is meeting the needs of students, but the school system also is facing increasing pressure on its budget due to special education needs and other areas of programming and curriculum. The school system does have a partnership with the city of Hoover in regard to funding, but there might be other opportunities for private partnerships the school system could explore for funding, he said.
Vice also is a board member for the Riverchase Residential Association and member of the Leadership Hoover Class of 2024. He has one son who graduated from Spain Park High School and is now at Troy University and two more sons currently at Spain Park. That means four of the five board members now have ties to Spain Park.
Vice said he’s proud of the accomplishments of the school system to this point and all the people who have worked to make it what it is today, and he looks at this as his opportunity to give back to the community he loves, he said.
“This is home. This is where we work. This is where we play. This is where we shop. This is the center of our universe as a family,” he said. “There’s no better place to plug in and serve. I’m absolutely committed to being true to the values and the mission statement of the school board.”
