It’s no secret that Yelm Community Schools is going through financial hardships amidst a district-wide quadruple levy failure, and with those struggles comes budget reductions.
However, two of Yelm High School’s (YHS) campus security guards, Matt Sturtz and Will Gumstrum, take a big issue with receiving their RIF notices ahead of the 2026-27 school year. Gunstrom previously spoke at a school board meeting on Thursday, May 14 and returned to the podium for a second time during the most recent school board meeting on Thursday, May 28. His colleague, Sturtz, spoke to the board for the first time during the meeting last Thursday.
“Tonight, I’m asking the board, directly, to reconsider the decisions on cutting campus security positions,” Sturtz said. “With these reductions, the district will lose its active shooter response program, ‘ALICE,’ because there will no longer be a certified instructor in the district. I would ask the board who else is qualified, has formal training, education, real world experiences in safety, security and emergency management necessary to continue this work. The two most experienced security professionals in the district have now been laid off.”
Sturtz said, according to the YCS website, it states YCS is focused on safety issues throughout the district and creating a sense of security for all students, staff and visitors — yet has chosen to eliminate two of three campus security guards at YHS.
“At the last board meeting, attendance was identified as a major concern,” Sturtz said. “One of the primary responsibilities of campus security is ensuring that students get to class on time, identifying those students who are skipping class, leaving campus and are truant. Eliminating campus security positions will only make those problems worse.”
Harassment, intimidation and bullying was also a topic of discussion during the last school board meeting, he claimed. Sturtz noted that the YHS campus security team is often the first to recognize when students are being bullied.
“If we’re not there, the presence of us not being there, those incidents may go unnoticed or not even reported,” Sturtz said. “Violent critical incidents are occurring across the country on a daily basis. In the last three years, there have been more than 441 gun incidents on school campuses where guns were discharged, resulting in 135 deaths and 340 injuries.”
He added that those numbers do not include data from stabbings and assaults. Sturtz also pointed to local violent outbursts at schools like Foss High School, where stabbings occurred at the end of April, or to Graham-Kapowsin High School where a non-student arrived on campus carrying a gun on the first day of class.
