Florida school districts penalized by state for having mask mandates
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.—Eight school districts, including all three in South Florida, received financial penalties for violating state rules that say parents must be able to choose whether their kids wear masks.
The state Board of Education, without discussion, unanimously accepted Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s recommendation to impose penalties equal to the monthly salaries of School Board members. In addition, the state was authorized to withhold an amount equal to the federal grants that two districts, Broward and Alachua, received to maintain their mask policies.
Palm Beach County will lose $27,284, equal to one month’s salaries for its seven School Board members. Miami-Dade, which has nine School Board members, will lose $35,000.
Broward’s penalties are steeper since it received a $421,000 grant from the Biden administration for standing firm on its policies. It’s already lost $70,000, now it will likely lose another $456,000, equal to the grant plus one month’s salaries for School Board members.
Corcoran said the Biden grant “improperly attempts to interfere” with the state managing its education system.
“Education is a state responsibility, not a federal one,” he said. “By their own terms, these grants encourage school districts to violate Florida law.”
The federal government said that it is Florida that may be violating the law — federal law — by deducting the grant money. Ian Rosenblum, deputy assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education, said in a letter to Corcoran that the federal funds used for the grants come with certain protections, and the state can’t consider this money when determining how much to fund schools.
“As always, the U.S. Department of Education stands ready to support you ... in sustaining safe in-person instruction for all students and meeting their social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs during this critical time,” Rosenblum wrote.
The feud over masks — with districts and the federal government on one side and state leaders on another — has been brewing since early August. That’s when the state Health Department, at the order of Gov. Ron DeSantis, issued the first of its two rulings that said parents had the right to choose whether children wear masks.
Five school districts — Broward, Miami-Dade, Alachua, Duval and Leon — on Wednesday filed a new legal challenge to the health department rule on those grounds. The school boards previously filed a similar challenge but it was dismissed when the health department repealed its original rule replacing it with a similar but slightly altered one.
“We believe strongly that the governor, Department of Education and now the new surgeon general have overreached their constitutional rule-making authority,” Broward School Board chairperson Rosalind Osgood said. “It is our intent to move forward with legal challenges.”
At Thursday’s board meeting, each district superintendent was given five minutes to state their case on why their districts shouldn’t be penalized. They said they were following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Delta variant was impacting children, that there’s no vaccine for young children, that cases and quarantines were mounting and masks have been effective at reducing spread.