Public records requests a topic of discussion at latest YCS board meeting

As more citizens continue to file for public records requests in local and state jurisdictions, Chris Woods, Yelm Community Schools superintendent, highlighted the district’s “meticulous” process in handling the requests.

During a YCS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, June 25, Woods said public records requests have become a hot topic at the state level, city level and within public schools throughout Washington state.

“(In) 2023-24, we had 34 public records requests. 2024-25, we had 66,” Woods said. “This year, we currently have 80 that have been completed. We have 11 that are in process, which will put us at 91 for the 2025-26 school year. The reason this is relevant, a few reasons, number one, we’ve had to hire a staff member 10-hours a week to help process public records. It has taken a while to get to that place, but we’re now at a place where in order to process them, according to the RCW, we have to have additional staffing.”

According to Woods, YCS’s human resources department includes two employees and an additional director — who also oversees payroll. The superintendent added that community members seem to think these requests magically happen.

“You have to be very meticulous. You have to be very detailed,” Woods said. “There are also very strict guidelines in responding to public records requests, otherwise, you could get sued if you don’t accurately provide the data.”

Additionally, Woods said these requests often include reviewing hours worth of video and spending additional time redacting student’s faces from the video. He added that the human resources team may also look through thousands of emails and redact sensitive information.

“It takes hours and hours of our time, and also taxpayer dollars that we have to pay in order to respond to these,” Woods said. “Majority of the public records requests are not for tort claims. They are not for lawsuits. The majority of them are for people who want that information, and typically they have it and put it on social media, or just hang on to it because they want to know.”

The superintendent added that YCS is paying an employee each week for 10-work hours relating to public records requests. Woods noted the 10-hour allotment may increase in the future if the more requests continue to come in.

Additionally, Woods claimed that the state legislature is looking into the rise in public records requests.

“There may be some legislation this next session that could change the public records act and school districts’ responsibilities in responding,” Woods said. “This is a significant amount of time for our district.”

In many cases, according to Woods, YCS will receive a public records request and must respond back within five days. Additionally, the district must acknowledge the timeframe of which they’ll be sending the results from the request.

“It’s not uncommon to not be able to respond to those for a month or two months because it takes that long to gather the data,” Woods said. “I think it’s important for you to know. We also keep a record of every person who does a public records request, and that’s also a public records document. Anybody can look and see who is requesting those documents and what they are addressing.”

Woods also recalled working in the Olympia School District and how the district was managing these requests through its communications department.

“I remember when I worked in the Olympia School District, they went from doing it in-house in their communications department — which we don’t have one,” Woods said. “Then, they ended up having to dedicate a specific person and they’ve got a person in their district where that’s their job — public records requests.”

Woods added that medium and larger-sized districts, like Olympia, are now having to employ people to work on these public records requests.

“Districts cannot afford to make mistakes on this because then you can get sued and have to pay more money because you may have inadvertently left off an email that was supposed to be included in it,” Woods said. “When you’re looking at thousands and thousands of documents and hundreds of minutes of video and other documentation you have to review before you respond — it takes a tremendous amount of time.”

Board member Ryan Jewell told the board, superintendent and attendees of the meeting that he loves the transparency element of public records requests. He also asked Woods if someone was interested in donating money to the high school to go towards time spent with the requests.

“I don’t know too many districts that are getting donations for that, but we’ll take it,” Woods said.