YCS recap: District approves $7.8 million transfer to general fund, issues refund for donation

The board members in attendance of the Yelm Community Schools Board of Directors meeting on Thursday, March 12, had a busy evening as they approved three resolutions in regards to a request for apportionment redirection of money into the general fund, refunding a restricted gift and on policy revisions, replacements and additions.

Chris Woods, YCS Superintendent, spoke to the audience on the request for apportionment redirection and stated that, specifically, this movement of money is what he spoke about during the last board meeting on Thursday, Feb. 26.

“We’re moving over $7.8 million from our capital projects over to our general fund,” Woods said. “We are not allowed to move any other money over from capital projects. When that money is spent, it’s gone. That takes away from potential projects that we would have done but because of the situation, we’re financially needing it for the general fund.”

The YCS Board of Directors unanimously approved the request for apportionment redirection.

Next, Woods spoke on the refund of a restricted gift to YHS Connects. He said the booster club had made a donation to Yelm High School’s band program for pep band, marching band and concert band — three different components needing fulfillment.

“They made a donation for all three,” Woods said. “Our band teacher at the high school committed to doing all of those and then was not able to do the pep band during basketball season, so then it went to staff and another band teacher in the district said they would do it. You had to do 10 performances at basketball games. He was only able to do four, so that means we didn’t do six pep band performances. We are refunding that money back to the booster club so we can make sure that money gets used for what it was intended to be used for.”

He added that a resolution was created in order to issue the booster club with a refunded check, and that the district wanted to be “very clear” on why it was issuing this refund.

Woods noted that the refunded check was broken down based on the 10-scheduled performances. With only 40% of the performances taking place, the check covered the 60% of performances that weren’t completed.

This resolution was unanimously approved.

Finally, the school board members unanimously approved the final reading of policy revisions, replacements and additions regarding policies 2170, 3241, 5010, 5011, 6700, 6701, 6702 and 4040. These changes can be viewed in the district’s agenda packet for the Thursday, March 12 meeting online at ycs.wednet.edu.

“One of the challenges we face, as a school district, is when we are told, by law, to place something in policy.,” Woods said. “We sometimes wrestle with some of the things — a sentence here, a word that goes in there.”

He added that another important aspect is that at any point in time, YCS can go back, modify and change the policies and procedures. According to Woods, if something were to change in legislation or YCS identified a different pathway to “do something,” they’d bring it back to change. If a district does not update language that’s required by law to be altered, the district can be impacted in several ways.

“One, my certificate can be taken and I wouldn’t be able to be an educator in the state, or board members are removed from the board,” Woods said. “This is something that our state, OSPI, is very much watching right now. There was a local district that made a decision and did a resolution… on a particular thing and the board passed the resolution with 3-to-2. The resolution was against state law. Well, OSPI sent a letter to the superintendent saying ‘you will not do that otherwise you’ll lose your certificate.’ The board said to the superintendent, ‘you will do this because we passed this.’”