Hello West Valley!
We hope you are enjoying your summer and finding time to relax with family and friends. We are excited that our fall start will provide full in-person learning for our students. We have been committed to providing you updated information as it becomes available so you can make the most informed decisions for your student(s).
Governor Inslee announced yesterday, July 28th, that all staff and students must continue to wear face coverings/masks, regardless of vaccination status in K-12 school settings. The Delta variant is escalating across our state and nation, and it has changed the perspective of public health officials at the state and national levels quite substantially over the last week. Staff and students did an amazing job of following state masking requirements last year and we are committed to practicing health and safety measures to provide in-person learning. The following bullets summarize the masking requirements for summer and fall.
- All staff and students must continue to wear face coverings/masks, regardless of vaccination status (indoors).
- Indoor Mask Requirements - All school personnel, volunteers, visitors, and students must wear cloth face coverings, or an acceptable alternative (e.g., surgical mask or clear face shield with a drape), at school, when indoors. Staff who are verified to be fully vaccinated may be indoors without masks when students are not present or expected to be present. School districts must support compliance with mask requirements among staff, students, volunteers, visitors, and families
- Allows students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, to remove face coverings while they are outdoors.
- Outdoor Mask Requirements - Per the Secretary of Health’s Mask Order, face coverings are not required outdoors, regardless of vaccination status. Masks are strongly recommended for unvaccinated individuals when outdoors in crowded spaces or when in close contact with people from outside their household for a sustained period of time, as the risk of COVID-19 infection increases with the duration and closeness of contact between individuals. Schools should support students and staff who choose to wear a mask or face covering outdoors.
What is not changing is the expectation that our schools will be open full-time for every family that wants a full-time, in-person learning experience. School start and end times will return to their regular, pre-COVID schedule. The K-12 guidance from Washington Department of Health clearly states that the goal is to maximize in-person instruction. Our school year may be starting off with masks, but our return to our most effective learning model at scale moves forward! We have a variety of options for every family. For information regarding our new online virtual learning program options, please visit the WVSD Virtual Learning Center website at https://vlc.wvsd.org/.
We will continue to provide updates as we receive them. Please join us for our next Community Connections Webinar for information regarding the start of the school year.
Community Connections Zoom/Facebook Live - Thursday, August 19th at 5 pm
Meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/92921829315 or by telephone: US: +1 253 215 8782
Webinar ID: 929 2182 9315
We appreciate your patience as these changes occur and we are delighted to welcome all students back to full-time, in-person learning!
-WVSD Team