Dear students, staff, families and community,
I hope this message finds you healthy and happy and that you are enjoying some time playing in the snow. With the fun in the snow also comes the need for us to monitor upcoming weather events, operational impacts to our facilities and road conditions throughout the district. We will be continuing to monitor these things as we approach January 3rd, and we will keep you updated about any anticipated impacts to our return to campus.
We are also monitoring the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rising cases of the Omicron variant. Whatcom County Superintendents met with Whatcom County Health Officials this week and remain in regular communication with them. We want to remind our families that as new guidance comes out from agencies such as the CDC and Washington State, we will be continuing to follow Washington State’s K-12 Guidance. We will continue to work in collaboration with the Whatcom County Health Department on impacts to school operations caused by COVID cases or outbreaks. It remains our goal to operate in-person learning and we will maintain that focus, but there is a possibility that individual classrooms or grade levels may be moved to remote learning based on case numbers. This has always been a possibility during the pandemic, and we want our families to be as prepared as possible for this change.
With all of these factors in mind, we want to remind you of all the ways we use to communicate with our families. You can use our app to receive notifications; remember to subscribe to the district level notifications as well as those from your student’s specific school. (Find it in your app store “Blaine School District, WA”.) We will also use email to communicate, along with putting information out on www.blainesd.org and pushing that out to Facebook and Twitter. In the case of changes to school days or start times, we will also communicate with an automated call and a text message. (You will only receive the text message if your primary phone number is a cellular number.) We will also update our schedule hotline, so if you ever think you may have missed a message about schedule changes you can call in to 360-332-0789.
I wish you and your families a very Happy New Year. Whatever this year brings us, we will be in it together. It’s a great night to be a Borderite, and, as always, a great night to be your superintendent.
Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher Granger
Every Student. Every Day. In a New Way!