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Four of Florida's largest school districts are defying Governor Ron DeSantis' ban on mask mandates as thousands of children have been sent home just days into the new school year, the Associated Press reported.
"The forced masking of schoolchildren infringes upon parents' rights to make health and educational decisions for their own children," Christina Pushaw, the governor's spokeswoman, said Wednesday. She said that no one on a school board is exempt from the law.
Broward and Alachua counties have required students to wear facial coverings unless they get a doctor's note since the start of the school year. They were joined by Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties on Wednesday. Orange County still allows a parental opt-out
Hillsborough, which changed its policy during an emergency meeting on Wednesday, had 2,058 confirmed COVID-19 cases and sent more than 10,000 students into isolation because of infection or quarantine due to exposure.
Nadia Combs, a school board member in Hillsborough County who sponsored the new mask policy, said she was not on the board for political partisanship, but "to keep our schools open. That is my goal."
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Children—particularly those too young to get vaccinated against COVID-19—are "really good" at transmitting the coronavirus, said Dr. J. Stacey Klutts, a special assistant to the national director of pathology and lab medicine for the entire Veterans Affairs system.
Klutts said the highly contagious Delta variant makes it absolutely necessary to wear masks indoors and avoid large group gatherings, so if unprotected students sit for hours in classrooms every day, it could rapidly spread infection in the community at large.
"It's terrifying. I'm afraid that we're going to have a lot of really sick kids in addition to the spread which is going to be a lot of sick adults," Klutts said.
Students began their school year in Palm Beach County on August 10 with a parental opt-out policy that allowed more than 10,000 children to attend classes without masks. The board reversed course after seeing the numbers: After just one week, 734 students and 112 employees had confirmed infections, and more than 1,700 students had been sent home, Interim Superintendent Michael Burke said.
Statewide, Florida reported 23,335 new COVID-19 infections for Tuesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services dashboard reported 17,096 hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients.
DeSantis, a Republican, also is in an escalating power struggle with the Democratic White House. After President Joe Biden ordered possible legal action Wednesday, the U.S. Education Department raised the possibility of using its civil rights arm against Florida and other Republican-led states that have blocked public health measures meant to protect students.
"Some state governments have adopted policies and laws that interfere with the ability of schools and districts to keep our children safe during in-person learning," Biden's executive order said.
Issuing his own executive order last month, DeSantis said Florida must "protect parents' right to make decisions regarding masking of their children," and he tasked the state education commissioner with finding ways to make districts comply, including withholding state funds.
Earlier this year, DeSantis also signed a law barring government entities or any other institution from infringing on parental rights to "direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health" of their children without demonstrating that such action is reasonable, necessary and narrowly tailored.
