According to an email sent to parents by Santa Monica High School Principal Antonio Shelton, the students were dismissed early Friday due to “a bomb threat that was received at the switchboard.”

In the email, Shelton noted, “The Santa Monica Police Department has officers on the Samohi campus and during a sweep, they discovered a suspicious package. They are bringing in bomb-sniffing dogs to do a comprehensive sweep of campus.”

The email was posted to social media around 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon. The city had issued a traffic alert at around 2:45 p.m. announcing that Pico Boulevard from Lincoln to Main Street, which marks the southern border of the Santa Monica High School campus, had been closed to vehicle and foot traffic.

A Water Polo match scheduled for this afternoon has been cancelled as a result. An evening performance of a the play “Zoot Suit” is still scheduled “pending further direction from SMPD,” according to the email.

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