YCS monitors legislative developments before making cuts

During a Yelm Community Schools board meeting on Thursday, March 27, YCS Superintendent Chris Woods said there isn’t an urgency to make cuts for the 2025-26 school year as the district will not do a reduction in force (RIF).

While the district will still discuss options for cuts in the next school year, Woods said it’s important for YCS to monitor legislative developments and potential changes to state law before making any decisions regarding cuts.

“We are not doing a RIF in our district, therefore we are not bound by timelines that are in the collective bargaining agreements. That’s why we’re taking our time. We’re going to do this right and we’re going to do it well,” Woods said during the meeting. “We’re going to make sure we have all the information that’s available to us before we make those final decisions. If there are people who are not being patient with this, I understand. People want to know what the cuts are, but we would not be doing our jobs well if we’re making decisions without all the information.”

The superintendent added the district is looking at several areas in order to balance the budget, including rolling over cuts from last year.

“One is rolling over cuts from last year, taking a real close look at all the cuts we’ve made and determining which ones we’re going to roll over. Keeping in mind we have to maintain the level of cuts we made last spring, and then cut more,” Woods said. “If we put things back on the table from last year, then we’ve got to find other things to cut.”

With the 2025 legislative session scheduled to conclude on Sunday, April 27, Woods said he and the school board will be monitoring it closely. He believes, one way or another, the legislative session is going to “tremendously impact” YCS.

“If we were to make some cuts ahead of the legislative decisions and we got additional funds, I think that would be considered mismanagement of funds if we’re making additional cuts when we’re going to have revenue coming in. We’re waiting on that,” he said.

The district is also going to look at staffing allocations based on collective bargaining agreements and based on the “prototypical model” of what class sizes should be and how classes should be staffed, according to Woods.

He said that each department and budget will be looked at in order to determine what areas can be reduced by budget cuts. He noted that YCS already reduced “quite a bit” last year with building budget reduction.

According to Woods, the district will also look at all revenue coming into YCS, and will revisit rules around the revenue to determine if it can be used for staffing. If it can be used for staffing, Woods would like to see it be maximized.

The superintendent said that YCS principals met earlier in the day on Thursday, March 27, and took a look at the in-district transfers and enrollment projections for next school year. In the past, Woods said, Yelm has taken “pretty much all transfers,” until it reduced a “number of transfers” last year. Woods said these enrollment projections will determine if YCS has the space for incoming transfers.

There will be another YCS district board meeting on Thursday, April 17, and a study session on Monday, April 28 — just one day after the conclusion of the state’s legislative session. Woods said he’ll be sharing the feedback he received from the Yelm Education Association, in reference to waiting until the conclusion of the session to make cuts. The school district’s response will also be shared.