Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
Chris Woods, Yelm Community Schools (YCS) Superintendent, announced during a YCS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22, that all public records requests toward the district would be shared in the monthly board meeting’s packet.
Woods noted the public records requests would also be readily available for the community to access online. You can view the first batch of YCS public records requests here: https://tinyurl.com/YelmPublicRecords1.
According to the superintendent, YCS has received 20 public records requests between Sept. 1, and Oct. 13. He noted the work needed to fulfil the requests would take approximately 45 hours, seven-and-a-half hours per week, or 20% of a 40-hour employee’s work week.
“I think it’s important to know how much time and energy taxpayer dollars are going into responding to public records requests,” Woods said. “You guys get to see on your packet where they come from. They come from local people wanting information. They come from people across the country. They come from organizations. They come from a number of places for a number of reasons.”
Woods noted, in the school board packet, viewers will see the name of the person or party requesting the public records. A few columns to the right will be the reason for each public record request.
“One of the things we’ve heard over the last couple of years is the importance of transparency,” Woods said. “We’re going to start posting those every board meeting we have here, so once a month we’ll update that so you guys will get an update on those public records. You’ll have access to all that information there. Obviously we’ve redacted some information if they’ve requested something having to do with a student’s name or something like that. We’ve taken out that kind of information.”
Woods said, other than that, the district will continue to keep the community updated on public records requests each month.
He added that not every district offers direct access to public records requests like YCS has begun to, but noted the district drew inspiration from several districts across Washington state already doing such.
“There are a couple districts we saw doing that for the very same reason,” Woods said. “Just the sheer volume of public records requests and the amount of staff time that goes into that. We don’t get any funding for any type of position for responding to public records requests. We are out to January now for responses. So as you get more, it pushes out timelines to get those responses.”
According to Woods, YCS gets to set the date for information relating to each public record request to go out. He said this date is based on the workload and how long it will take to gather the information requested.
“I also know, as I’ve said before, our legislators are looking at this,” Woods said. “I think what we’re seeing, in reality, is not matching what the original intent was. I think there’s some conversation there. I don’t think anything will change, but there’s definitely a lot of time and energy going into responding.”
