Facing a threat from Governor Ron DeSantis to withhold funding from districts that require students to wear masks, Broward County Public Schools backed down and rescinded its mask mandate.
School board officials said Monday the district would comply with the governor’s recently-signed executive order that prevents the state’s public schools from requiring facial coverings. School officials released a statement saying it would not mandate masks, but would instead encourage eligible students and school employees to get vaccinated.
“Safety remains our highest priority. The District will advocate for all eligible students and staff to receive vaccines and strongly encourage masks to be worn by everyone in schools.”
DeSantis has maintained his opposition to mask mandates even as Florida is being ravaged by a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible delta variant. Tuesday marked the third consecutive day it has broken the state record for COVID hospitalizations, with 11,515 recorded.
From The Miami Herald:
The school board and CDC decision came as the highly infectious delta variant of COVID-19 has continued to spread rapidly throughout the country, with Florida accounting for more than 1 in 5 new COVID cases in the United States. On Saturday, Florida reported 21,683 new COVID cases to the CDC for Friday, July 30, the single-biggest, one-day spike in new cases since the pandemic began 18 months ago.
On the same day that Florida had its single highest count of new COVID cases, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order that would allow the State Board of Education to withhold funding to any district in the state that forced students to wear masks when they returned to school. DeSantis said he wants parents to be able to decide whether to have their children wear masks. It was just last week that Broward County school board officials, who oversee the second-biggest district in the state with more than 266,000 students, unanimously voted to require masks for students, teachers, staff and visitors at its schools. It came on the same day the CDC announced its recommendations that masks be worn inside K-12 schools regardless of a person's vaccination status. Broward public schools resume classes August 18.
DeSantis doubled down on his anti-mask stance when asked on Tuesday during an event.
The state, he said, will not be "shutting down; we're going to have schools open."He said Covid-19 mitigation efforts and "interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic" to prevent virus spread, "not just in the United States but abroad."
He also said that his strategy to focus on vaccinating seniors first has reduced COVID-related deaths in Florida from last year. He added that seeing more infections among younger, healthier residents was preferable than than seeing the elderly catching it.
“Even among a lot of positive tests, you are seeing much less mortality that you did year-over-year. “Would I rather have 5,000 cases among 20-year-olds or 500 cases among seniors? I would rather have the younger.”
One Florida county has taken things a little further though. According to Jacksonville.com: Duval County Public Schools, in the Jacksonville area, “will have a mask mandate — with a catch.”
The Duval County School Board voted late Tuesday night to make face masks required among students unless parents or guardians opt-out with appropriate paperwork.
Adding the layer of paperwork for families who want their students to opt-out of mask wearing marks an attempted workaround to the governor’s executive order.