Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
During a Yelm Community Schools Board meeting on Thursday, April 17, Superintendent Chris Woods said YCS is looking to finalize its Strategic Planning Committee in the coming weeks.
Woods said many in the Yelm community have been interested in joining the committee, as 20 parents applied and 15 other community members have turned in applications. In addition, Woods said YCS staff from different departments, along with administrators from elementaries, middle schools and high schools, will be involved in the strategic planning committee.
Five Strategic Planning Committee meetings have been set for May 1, May 15 and May 29, as well as June 12 and June 19. Each meeting will last from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., though the sessions will not be an open meeting format, Woods told the Nisqually Valley News.
“Those will be pretty packed meetings as far as content and work we have to do,” Woods said. “The board has looked through the applications, and we’ll be notifying the people who were selected. We’ll be doing that next week. Then, we’ll start meeting in May.”
Following the five meetings with the Strategic Planning Committee, Woods believes there would be a really good start on the YCS strategic plan. He noted work will be done with the board and YCS staff in order to finalize the plan.
“Big thanks to our student learning department really looking at our data. Our first big meeting will be focused on digging into the data and what the data is telling us. It will tell us areas we’re doing well, and areas we need to improve,” Woods said. “Typically, each school district puts together a strategic plan. This is your road map for decision making and it takes you from where you are as a district, it might be academically, socially or emotionally. It takes some of the main areas of where we are as a district, and where we want to be.”
The superintendent added that creating a Strategic Planning Committee is a common practice for school districts, and that it would allow YCS to revisit the plan along the way in order to track progress.
“You can use it as a filter for your decision making. So, in the future as we move forward with making decisions around staffing, around priorities, we revisit our strategic plan to see what we said we’d do, and what the strategies are that we put in place,” Woods said. “We can use it as a filter for making decisions. It’s basically an organizational way of goal setting.”
In efforts to bolster the committee, Woods said YCS has invited parents, students and committee members to apply to brainstorm and create a strategic plan with the district.
“Some people have questions about strategic planning in general. It’s something that every district does, and it’s time for us to revisit our strategic plan and create new goals for a path forward,” Woods said.
In addition to the Strategic Planning Committee, Woods said the YCS human resources department has been doing a lot of work in efforts towards finding info on comparable school districts in relation to Policy 5310 — which covers staff compensation schedules.
“I know when we talked about making cuts, administration is usually the first on the list that people might offer up, after the superintendent — which is usually the first one,” Woods said. “What we’re finding is our administrators and those in policy 5310 are anywhere from 30% to 12% behind in comparables. Just a reminder, last year all of those positions got a 0% increase for the school year, and our administrators also have furlough days between five and 10.”
The superintendent added he’ll be placing together a proposal in the coming weeks to present various options before the Yelm School Board of Directors, which includes Frank King, Denise Hendrickson, Debbie Edwards, Casey Shaw and Bill Hauss.
“Even though we’re in a time of cuts, we have to figure out how to keep those positions competitive or else we’ll lose staff. We also know that being that far behind in comparables in any one of our labor groups would not be acceptable,” Woods said. “I know that’s not popular. I’m very aware that administration is what everyone offers up to cut, and I’m not talking about my position. I’m talking about the other administrators we need to address in order to keep those people here.”
