Allendale Public Schools

District Office |10505 Learning Lane | Allendale, MI 49401 | 616-892-5570

July 12, 2021

To: Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Director Elizabeth Hertel (MDHHS), Health Officer Lisa
Stefanovsky (OCDPH), State Representative Luke Meerman, and State Senator Roger Victory,

Aligned with the guidelines we received last year set forth in the Return to School Roadmap, as
well as guidance from the MDHHS and CDC, Allendale Public Schools committed to providing
in-person instruction throughout the 2020/2021 school year, while ensuring comprehensive
cleaning, quarantining and social distancing protocols to keep our students and staff safe. We
understood that when the outbreak originally began, there were many unknowns and the best
course of action appeared to be proceeding with extreme caution, thus despite the fact that we
believed schools deserved to have greater local control to use our internal data to make decisions,
we willingly followed your guidance in order to keep our students in person from day one.

Thankfully, despite all of the challenges, our APS students enjoyed a successful and productive
school year, though unfortunately, our full potential was unrealized due to the required COVID
protocols. Now, our focus turns to the 2021/2022 school year and our parents deserve to know
what potential mitigation protocols will be required for their students in order to fully participant
for in-person instruction this year.

With this in mind, the Allendale Public Schools Board of Education respectfully insist you
respect the educational rights of students, and the right of parents to make informed decisions for
their own child by ensuring that guidance be issued only as recommendations and never
mandates on the following issues:

1) Mask wearing should be voluntarily for students and staff.

2) Any consideration for required vaccination of students should include an option for
parents to sign a waiver exempting their student based on personal preference.
3) Any consideration for required vaccination of staff should also include an option for
employees to sign a waiver exempting them from needing to vaccinate or wear a mask.
4) Mandatory testing of student athletes should not be required for participation, and if it is
considered, parents should have the right to sign a waiver to have their student not test
yet still participate.
5) Contact tracing for quarantine should only include members of the same household.
6) Under no circumstances should participation in educational or extra-curricular
experiences be based on vaccination or testing choices, as all students deserve equal
access to educational opportunities.
 Allendale Public Schools
District Office |10505 Learning Lane | Allendale, MI 49401 | 616-892-5570

7) Schools shall have total authority to hire any necessary personnel to meet the educational
and health needs of students and staff. Medical personnel employed by the State or
County health departments should not be placed in schools.

We beseech you to grant local control back to the schools and our legislators, to make decisions
based on local data, both educational and health-related, in collaboration with the Ottawa County
Department of Public Health. For example, we knew last January that our positivity rate for
students being placed into quarantine was less than 2% and yet we had to quarantine over 1,500
students for a cumulative loss of approximately 12,000 days of instruction. We should have had
the authority to modify the protocols for quarantines much sooner than we were granted, which
did not come until the end of April.

Allendale Public Schools is prepared to make decisions based on our data which will keep
students and staff safe, while providing excellent educational opportunities for all of our
students. These decisions are too big and too important to be made with a broad brush, with little
to no consideration for local circumstances. Give our legislators, who were elected to represent
us in Lansing, a voice in determining recommended guidelines.

Again, our parents deserve to know what they can expect regarding the upcoming school year, so
we are sending this letter to implore you to allow districts to make decisions based on our own
data, allow parents to make decisions for their children based on their personal beliefs and
outline your expectations as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Allendale Public Schools Board of Education President Josh Thurkettle

Allendale Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Garth Cooper