Yelm superintendent, committee members review current draft of strategic planning results

During the Yelm Community School Board meeting on Thursday, July 17, Superintendent Chris Woods and several volunteer members of the district’s Strategic Planning Committee reviewed the current draft of YCS’s five-year strategic plan.

The Strategic Planning Committee is composed of over 30 members including YCS staff, parents and community members. The committee held five two-hour meetings on May 1, May 15, May 29, June 12 and June 19 in order to create a five-year strategic plan for the district to follow in order to measure progress towards different YCS-wide goals.

Nearly half of the Strategic Planning Committee was present during the meeting on July 17. The superintendent thanked each of them for their time and efforts throughout the committee meetings.

“We met after every meeting to take all the information, synthesize it down, send it back out in a note form, and make sure we were on the right track and make sure we were hitting the target,” Woods said. “We talked about why, why do we do this? We do this to create a roadmap for our district as we move forward. We also use it as a filter for making decisions as we move forward — in times of plenty, in times of less, in times of challenge, in times of success. This plan is used to guide us as we make decisions.”

The superintendent is excited about the plan because he believes it represents a wide variety of residents within the Yelm community and includes a “nice cross-section” of participants.
Woods believes the power of strategic planning will align YCS’s work to a clear mission, set shared priorities across all schools, grade levels and departments, focus resources on “what matters most for students,” build trust through transparency and accountability, and reflect the voices and values of the community.

“One of the things we want to make sure we’re doing is being open about the work we’re doing, and why we’re doing it,” Woods said.

“I’ve worked in three districts and been through a number of these processes. Never have I been a part of a strategic planning process where we looked at as much data as we got,” Woods said. “Our team, our committee, wanted to see all the pieces of data that we possibly could to make decisions around strategies, goals and implementation.”

The superintendent added that YCS’s Strategic Planning Committee has looked at the good, the bad and the ugly of its current financial situation. He believes this plan has captured the areas that YCS is currently strong and weak in, and added everything within the strategic plan has measurable goals and outcomes to improve areas of weakness and sustain fields of strength.

Dr. Lisa Cadero-Smith, YCS assistant superintendent, followed Woods’ comments at the podium and discussed the mission plan of the district’s strategic plan. She described the mission as “the heart of the strategic plan.”

“You’ll see it captured in these core ideas that will repeat themselves throughout. You’re going to hear, ‘learning, belonging and community.’ So empowering every student to reach their full potential through strong instruction, meaningful relationships and deep connections with family and community,” Cadero-Smith said. “One of the things that makes this strategic plan unique is this huge community component … We are not where we want to be at this time with our community. I think there’s simply an acknowledgement of that, and we are Yelm Community Schools. We want to recapture that idea. Community is a huge, huge part of this.”

The strategic plan’s three core commitments, according to Cadero-Smith, include learning, belonging and community.

She said every student should receive challenging and engaging instruction that supports their academic growth each day. The assistant superintendent knows this doesn’t happen in isolation, and stated belonging is the environment that makes learning possible. She added that the community provides the network of support that sustains both learning and belonging — tying all three core commitments together.

“Family, staff and community partners each play a role in helping students thrive inside and outside of the classroom,” Cadero-Smith said. “It’s not just these notions of learning, belonging and community, but it’s how they’re deeply interrelated.”

The committee also developed seven strategic priorities from the five-year strategic plan “by directly using the words and voice of the community,” Cadero-Smith said.

The seven strategic priorities include:

• Instructional excellence
• Responsive support for all students
• Student engagement and ownership in the learning process
• Meaningful relationships and belonging
• Leadership recognition and voice opportunities for students
• Family and community partnerships
• Transparency and trust

She also highlighted several educational goals from the strategic plan, and noted several of them are focused on attendance.

“Essentially, they’re focused on attendance. One of the things that was absolutely recognized was that we have to focus on attendance. Students have to be at school to learn. The next one is around strengthening tier one instruction, and this means the first instruction the students receive in every class and every grade level,” Cadero-Smith said. “Expansion of academic interventions and data informed structures, increasing student engagement, and we do this through relevant student centered instructional design and provide opportunities for student voice. The last piece under learning is building a personalized graduation and post-secondary pathways through the high school and beyond plan tracking tools.”

She also highlighted three goals under belonging, which focus on expanding social and emotional systems and advisory models to build connections, supporting positive student behavior through restorative practices and clear and consistent expectations, and increasing student access to a diversity of opportunities in leadership and to share their voices.
Angela Taylor, a member of the Strategic Planning Committee, highlighted three goals within the community section of the plan. The goals included launching community voice initiatives and advisory groups to support shared ownership, improving two-way family-school communication through consistent platforms and regular updates, and increasing family involvement in student learning, attendance, events and planning

“We’re going to be building capacity for family involvement, for volunteering to share planning, to support students across academics, attendance and activities,” she said. “Together, these initiatives are going to move us from plan to practice, and will ensure every student is supported every single day.”

Judson Willis, South Pierce Fire and Rescue board of commissioners chair and strategic planning committee member, told audience members that the chance to join the Strategic Planning Committee was a “very difficult opportunity.”

“It wasn’t just where we sat together and pulled things out of thin air and said ‘I think this is going to work.’ These were very comprehensive, multi-hour blocked times that we put everything together,” Willis said.

He highlighted the five year implementation plan created by the committee, and focused on how these ideas can be put into action.

Five-year strategic plan:
2025-26: Focused on building systems, launching key initiatives and setting baseline data for a clear starting point.
2026-27: Focused on implementing consistency across the district while monitoring progress.
2027-28: Evaluation, analyzing progress using data and feedback, making adjustments.
2028-29: Deepen the work, scale the practices showing results and strengthening implementation district wide.
2029-30: Conduct a comprehensive review and begin developing the next strategic cycle.

“The multi-phase approach helps us move forward with purpose while staying responsive and focused for long-term success of students,” Willis said. “We feel this is a solid plan moving forward. We’ve had multiple interested individuals as parents, community members, business owners ... come together and say this is what doesn’t work, and this is what could work.”