Married YCS employees speak on security concerns at YHS at school board meeting

Will Gunstrom, a Yelm Community Schools (YCS) employee of nine years and recently laid off security guard, and his wife, Tamara Gunstrom, Fort Stevens Elementary School employee, took to the podium during the public comment portion of the YCS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, May 14, to highlight security concerns at Yelm High School (YHS) and within the district.

According to Will, superintendent Chris Woods or the school board has made a decision to let go of him and Matt Strutz from their positions of campus security at the high school.

“I believe in confidentiality and I take that oath seriously. The only thing I’m going to present here is a matter of public record. I’m not going to break that,” Will said. “With that, I want the board and the community to know why I think we are really getting laid off. For years, my partner and I have tried to bring awareness to the district and YCS about the dysfunction in safety at this district. The waste of taxpayer dollars. I could go on for hours about this particular subject. We’ve brought many communications to the board, to admin. We have all of it documented.”

Will noted that in December, Strutz had a meeting with the superintendent and Shannon Powell, director of student support, to review “whistleblower complaints” stemming from the campus security team.

“Nothing’s done. Nothing moves on,” Will said. “Every month, we continue to email and communicate trying to address these deficiencies and, again, nothing is done. I just want to make sure the community is aware of what was going on, what our communications were with the cabinet and with the superintendent on that subject.”

According to Will, with the reduction of campus security at YHS, active shooter training analysis will be going away. He claims that the only certified instructor within the school district was just cut.

“We’ve asked to be able to train new hires on active shooters, train new hires on safety and security and are being ignored,” Will said. “We asked to train all employees annually, just like we do the safe schools, and we’re ignored. We asked that all students receive age appropriate training on emergency procedures during the first week of school — we’re ignored.”

Will claimed he’s asked Woods if he’s read any of the “thousands of referrals” that happened this year before the layoff decision was made. He also asked the superintendent if he’s read the narrative on critical incidents where staff or students are injured, or if he’s read any of the alcohol or drug abuse referrals.

“He hadn’t read any of that stuff,” Will claimed. “We made this decision without even talking to the high school principal. Again, I just want to know who’s going to be responsible for dealing with these, again, thousands of incidents again next year? They’re not going away.”

Additionally, Will claimed there was a burglary at YHS two weeks ago and described it as an “inside job.” He noted that a police report was filed, and that the community’s information was compromised.

“Sensative information that was supposed to be shredded,” Will said.

We, campus security, discovered the breach, investigated and reported it. Who’s going to do that next year? The community has never been informed that their stuff was compromised.”

He added that, despite the police report, the community hasn’t been informed about this break in and wondered if the layoffs had taken place so these incidents wouldn’t be looked into.

“We have all kinds of different safety issues that we review. We reviewed our safety manuals for hours with our operations director trying to point out the deficiencies and move forward with changes,” Will said. “The response was to put up QR codes in all the classrooms so the kids can scan a QR code in an emergency and it will take them to the district website. That’s not a safety plan. Is that our safety plan for next year?”

Will’s wife, Tamara, told the board and attendees of the meeting that she’s worried about safety at YHS. She noted her son is a student at the school.

“What is he going to do,” she questioned. “Maybe he’s that child who’s attacked by that student who comes on to the campus high. What are we going to do? Some of the other things that my husband and his partner talked about with the board and superintendent is a lot of the waste that goes on that maybe they got tired of being told about?”

Though two campus security guards were laid off, Tamara noted there’s still two office professionals at the district office in OSS, there’s an assistant director of OSS and an assistant superintendent.

“I know there’s other districts in the same boat that we are, but they didn’t lay off security on behalf of the district office,” she said.
The two cuts of campus security saved the district $105,199, according to the meeting’s agenda packet.