Fla. school boards uniting
School boards across Florida may unite in a legal challenge against state mask rules that they say endanger students and the communities they were elected to represent.
The debate about whether students should be required to wear masks at school has divided Floridians for weeks, and it’s now leading an increasing number of districts to challenge state rules that leave it up to parents whether their children wear masks.
School Board members in Palm Beach County, for example, voted unanimously Wednesday to move forward with a legal challenge, action the Broward School Board took earlier.
Orange County School Board members said this week that they too might want to join the Broward and Palm Beach County fights.
Separately, three groups of parents have filed legal challenges to the state’s rules on masks. All of the lawsuits argue that the state has endangered the health of children because not everyone on campus is masked even as COVID-19 cases surge in Florida.
A judge in Leon County Circuit Court is hearing one of the cases this week and expects to rule Friday on whether the state rule is unconstitutional.
Another case was filed in federal court in South Florida by parents of children with disabilities. A third, also filed in South Florida, argues that the health department rule was improperly adopted and runs counter to its stated goal of improving safety.
The decision in Palm Beach County came after a grueling four hours of public comment, including two hours of recorded messages, from anti-mask protesters who nevertheless acknowledged that they are in the minority. A handful of people showed up to show their support for masks in school.
Earlier Wednesday, board members from all three districts in South Florida predicted that their decision to protect students by requiring masks will be vindicated in the courts.
“These are polarizing issues, but at the end of the day protecting children is not polarizing,” Palm Beach County board member Alexandria Ayala said during a news briefing. “It’s just the right thing to do.”
Both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that everyone in K-12 schools wear masks because so many children are too young to be vaccinated and the delta variant is so contagious.
At least nine districts across Florida are requiring masks unless a doctor says it would harm the student. They give parents no option to opt out.
The DeSantis administration so far has moved to sanction Alachua and Broward county schools, the first to mandate masks in violation of state orders. Ayala said she expects the state to serve Palm Beach County with a similar notice by the end of the week.
Mask opponents said a mandate would violate the governor’s order and Florida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, a new law that gives parents the right to make medical decisions for their children.
But a new poll released Tuesday by Quinnipiac University showed 60% of Floridians support requiring students and staff to wear masks in schools and 69% opposed DeSantis push to withhold school leaders’ salaries if they support mask mandates.
About 5,050 students stayed home from school in Palm Beach County as of Wednesday, with 1,811 students and 230 employees testing positive. The district reported 2,041 positive cases to date since the county began recording cases on Aug. 10, which Superintendent Michael J. Burke said is more than half of what the county experienced all last school year.
Broward County reported 84 students and 68 employees with positive COVID tests as of Tuesday, but the situation in Broward is difficult to assess because the district updates its data only twice a week — Tuesdays and Thursdays — rather than daily as Palm Beach County does.
Miami-Dade reported that 91 employees and one student have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Wednesday.
Ayala said she felt confident in voting for the School Board to move forward with a legal challenge because it’s an issue not only of public and student safety, but one about local control and their responsibility as board members to ensure a safe environment for students.
“I think something everyone can agree on is that the masks are not anyone’s favorite accessory, but it’s a medically, expert-recommended mitigation tool to help us through this pandemic,” she wrote in an email. “There is no room to leave safety up to chance, if even one child’s life is on the line it’s one too many.