Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
Chris Woods, Yelm Community Schools (YCS) superintendent, stated during a YCS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, Feb. 12, that the district does not support or encourage any student walkout events — and said YCS nor Yelm High School (YHS) had anything to do with the protest earlier in that day.
Around 9:40 a.m., roughly 50 YHS students participated in an anti-ICE walkout and marched 1.2 miles from the school to the corner of First Street and Yelm Avenue to wave their signs and protest.
Woods noted that YCS found out about the walk-out on Wednesday, Feb. 11, and that messaging was sent out to families later that evening.
“Last night, I sent out a message to our families letting them know this is not something we support. It is not something we encourage,” Woods said. “We are bound by state law that requires us to follow attendance policies. If students choose to leave, we have to follow through on our regular attendance.”
Additionally, Woods arrived at YHS around 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 12 — the day of the walkout. The superintendent said he was proud of YHS staff, and that he observed them act with a sense of professionalism during the walkout.
“Our staff members carried out like it was any old day. It really was at the high school,” Woods said. “It was not as big of a deal as people made it on social media. It was business as usual at the school. Yes, some students left. If I were to guess, about 50 students in total. Some of those even got excused by parents.”
The superintendent said some students were even excused by their parents for the walkout, and entered the YHS front office to officially be dismissed from class.
“Many of them had no idea why they were walking off campus, but they had friends that were doing it, therefore, they were also doing it,” Woods said. “I want to get back to the staff, administrators and teachers that had planning period in third period. They were all out and all visible when this happened.”
Woods noted there wasn’t a mass exodus of students or anything crazy. He painted a picture that there were handfuls of students who left campus “here and there.” Additionally, the superintendent said some students walked into the common area outside of the school and “waited for something to happen” — but he reiterated that nothing happened.
“Our staff talked to each student as they were walking. They called them by name and told them to be safe and make good choices,” Woods said. “Many of them also said, ‘are you sure you don’t want to go to class?’ Some actually turned around and went to class and some kept walking.”
He added, some students even returned to YHS after the walkout because “they were cold” or because “they didn’t know why they were walking out.”
Additionally, Woods said “it was made sure” that students weren’t returning to campus with anything unsafe after the walkout.
“A lot of parents were called today by staff, letting them know their child left campus,” he said. “I just think it’s important to know that our staff handled this very well. I think the main communication that we received as a district was from community members — not from parents.”
The most common message received from parents, according to Woods, was “why would (the district) allow this to happen” and “why is the school district supporting this?” After directly communicating with parents, Woods believes their concerns were alleviated.
“Once it was cleared up that this was something our school district was not supporting, this was not something that was led by staff, this was not something that we were encouraging,” Woods said. “As a matter of fact, students were held accountable for their attendance as they would be any other day. By the end of those conversations, people were appreciative and thanked us for our information.”
Woods also loves that concerned families actually reached out — describing the communication as being great. He added that if any family is concerned about something ongoing in the district, he’s glad when they call to hash the issue out, rather than taking the problem online to social media.
“I appreciate that they took the time to call and ask questions. I appreciate our staff for answering,” Woods said.
The superintendent said that kids must continue to receive their education and learn that there are appropriate ways of expressing how they’re feeling. As a community, Woods said, there needs to be a way to bring these students together to have a conversation so they don’t feel like they must do something “out of the ordinary” to make a statement.
“Our kids are getting bombarded with so much on social media. Every moment that they are on their phone, they’re getting bombarded and targeted with messaging on social media. It is very intentional,” Woods said. “In the algorithms, they’re very accurate and very smart. These kids are being bombarded every day. As a community, as families, we’ve got to help our kids navigate these times where they are getting mixed messages of ‘hey, you need to do this’ or ‘you need to walk out’ or ‘you need to protest.’ There are many schools in our county where walk outs are a weekly thing — not every once in a while.”
Within YCS, or every school district, Woods said there’s four types of issues in education. He said these four issues relate to students, staffing, family and social media.
He believes that when issues relate to students or staffing, it’s typically pretty easy for YCS to get a handle on what’s going on, what it needs to do, how the situation must be addressed and who needs to be involved.
“What was going on today was very quickly addressed within the system, within the school,” Woods said. “I would venture to say these students didn’t say much about it, but I would also venture to say they didn’t have much to say about it because it wasn’t a big deal. That was internally.”
With family issues, Woods said incidents sometimes arise where the district has to send out information through an email or a phone call to inform families on what happened.
The final issue, social media, was described as the “biggest waste of time” by Woods.
“This is where the six of us have to wrestle with how much time and energy do we give these social media issues, because many of them we address and take of within our district,” Woods said, referencing himself and the school board. “So then we have to say, ‘do we send out communication to our community because of this issue because there’s so much misinformation out there on social media about it?’ My question, I guess is a rhetorical question, is how much time does our community and our district want us to be spending on social media issues rather than the first two — student and staff?”
Woods believes the answer to that is already known, but noted that’s what YCS has to wrestle with every time an incident like the student walkout comes up.
