August 18, 2021
Dear Whittier Union Families,
Last week we opened our doors to over 10,000 students in our schools with a great deal of success. I want to thank our site administrative teams and our school staff for their tireless work to ensure your students’ safety and to provide them with the outstanding education that you expect from us.
We also know that as we open our schools we will have positive COVID cases on our campuses. We had them last spring, we had some this summer and we have some now. The key for us is to ensure that those cases do not lead to transmission on our campus and create an outbreak. To help us, we ask that if your child is not feeling well, that they would stay home from school. We will be providing voluntary COVID testing on all of our school sites upon their return to help give our families an extra layer of comfort and protection.
We know that masks are required by law to be worn indoors in schools. We are also recommending that everyone on campus wear masks outdoors when possible to decrease the possibility of having an outbreak on our campuses.
Finally we want to continue to encourage vaccinations for all students who are eligible. Under current health orders, any unvaccinated close contact of a positive COVID case will need to quarantine at home for at least 7 days. We will certainly provide assignments while on quarantine but the best way to avoid being quarantined is to be vaccinated. To this end, all of our campuses will be hosting vaccination clinics on campus during the school day next week. Students will need parent permission to participate. Our school sites will have more information about testing and vaccinations in the coming days. If your child is already vaccinated and you haven’t notified us yet, we ask that you either visit the AERIES parent portal and upload their vaccination card, or have your student bring their vaccination information to the school office for verification.
Once again, we are delighted to have our students back on campus with the best staff anywhere. We are committed to your child’s safety, education and social-emotional well-being and look forward to having a successful school year.
Sincerely,
Martin J. Plourde
Superintendent
Whittier Union High School District