Yelm superintendent appears on podcast, highlights levy conversation opportunities

Yelm Community Schools (YCS) Superintendent Chris Woods gave the audience of a YCS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, Oct. 8, an update on the district’s approach to campaign for its proposed levy in the upcoming Nov. 3 Thurston County general election.

Woods, during the superintendent’s comments portion of the meeting, said his comments would be brief, but that he wanted to emphasize some information about the proposed levy, which will run in the upcoming election at the rate of $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed home value. This is the fifth levy YCS has run in recent memory, with the previous four failing.

“We’ve got lots and lots of feedback on ways we should be communicating, and we’re monitoring all of that,” Woods said. “Everything from our website views to our social media posts, and our most popular post is how we compare in tax rates. That’s been visited almost 17,000 times.”

Woods added that there’s already been 22 different presentations held relating to the upcoming levy. When it’s all said and done, the superintendent noted that 30 different presentations will be completed about the ballot measure.

These presentations included a two-part podcast with TJ Kelly, the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s (OSPI) Chief Financial Officer (CFO). These podcasts can be viewed at https://tinyurl.com/YCSpodcast1 and https://tinyurl.com/YCSpodcast2.

“There’s a lot of interest in what’s going on in Yelm, and a lot of interest in supporting Yelm,” Woods said, during the meeting. “Also, I had an opportunity yesterday to give three of our city council members a tour of Prairie (Elementary) and the high school. I think that was pretty eye opening for them.”

Woods added that the conversation with the Yelm City Councilors went very well. The superintendent also presented to the council during a study session meeting earlier in the week on Tuesday, Oct. 6, where he highlighted the school’s proposed levy and current financial situation.

You can watch the city council study session meeting at https://tinyurl.com/CouncilStudySession.

“For the first time that I’ve been here, they’re taking a resolution to the city council on Tuesday (Oct. 13) to be voted upon to endorse the levy,” Woods said. “I appreciate their willingness to do that. I think that says how strongly they feel about it to even take the resolution to be voted on. They still have to vote. Obviously that can go either way, depending on the city council members. But they’ve already drafted up a resolution, which they have not done the previous four times that we’ve ran (a levy).”