Masks in schools draw Florida warning
MIAMI — Florida officials are threatening to withhold funds equal to the salaries of school board members if districts in two counties don’t immediately do away with strict mask mandates as the state continues to battle high hospitalization rates.
School boards in Broward and Alachua counties received a warning Friday from the State Board of Education giving them 48 hours to walk back their decisions to require masks for all students, exempting only kids with a doctor’s note.
“We cannot have government officials pick and choose what laws they want to follow,” Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said in an emailed statement. “These are the initial consequences to their intentional refusal to follow state law and state rule to purposefully and willingly violate the rights of parents. This is simply unacceptable behavior.”
Corcoran said the districts in those two areas are violating the Parents’ Bill of Rights and a July executive
order by Gov. Ron DeSantis that prompted rules limiting how far districts can go with mask requirements and other pandemic measures.
The Republican governor has pushed for districts not to mandate masks for all students, ordering the state’s health and education departments to devise rules so parents can make the decision. Corcoran was recommended to the post by DeSantis and appointed by the state board in 2019.
DeSantis maintains that masks can be detrimental for children’s development and that younger children simply don’t wear masks properly. But board members in the counties of Broward, home to Fort Lauderdale, and Alachua, home to Gainesville, decided not to allow parents to easily opt out of the mandate as coronavirus cases began straining hospitals in several parts of the state.
Florida is adding an average of about 20,300 new infections per day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported there were 16,849 people in Florida hospitals, with 3,500 of them in intensive care.
Broward County has Florida’s second-largest school district, among the largest in the nation, with about 270,000 students and a $5.4 billion budget. Alachua County’s district has about 30,000 students and a budget of $537 million.
Two other districts originally started the school year allowing parents to easily opt out of wearing masks, but this week their board members imposed a stricter measure, requiring all students to wear facial coverings unless they had a doctor’s note. And the board of the state’s largest district in Miami-Dade passed a measure this week also requiring masks and exempting only students with a doctor’s note.
Because of the size of the districts’ budgets, the cuts are more symbolic than harmful. For Alachua, its cut would be the equivalent of a 62-cent cut per $1,000. For Broward, the cut would be the equivalent of 14 cents per $1,000.
Corcoran’s order requires that districts provide information regarding the compensation of school board members who voted to impose strict mandates if they don’t immediately reverse their decisions. It also outlines that the state will begin to withhold the amount of money equal to their monthly salary, saying districts are prohibited from cutting funds in unrelated areas.
According to the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research, school board members in Alachua County make $40,000 per year; in Broward County, they earn $46,000.
FACE-OFF WITH GOVERNORS
In Texas and Arizona as well as Florida, millions of students are now required to wear masks as school boards in mostly Democratic areas have defied their Republican governors.
The three states are all hot spots in the nation’s recent covid-19 surge, and defiant boards in Miami, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and other urban areas argue that masks protect students, teachers and staff members from contracting and spreading the virus as many pediatric hospitals fill up.
The districts often cite the CDC, which recommends teachers, staff members and students all wear masks regardless of whether they’ve been vaccinated.
“This thing is not playing with us,” Marcia Andrews, a member of the Palm Beach County, Fla., School Board, said this week as it passed a mask mandate, according to the Palm Beach Post. “I don’t want to see a kid die.”
The governors argue that wearing masks stifles learning and does little to stop the virus’s spread, and that children rarely get serious- ly ill from the disease. They say mandates violate parents’ rights to determine how best to protect their children.
“Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated by public school districts or government entities,” Gov. Greg Abbott has said.
Dr. Jessica Snowden, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, said masks are proved to cut the virus’s spread among children if worn consistently. She said the delta variant infects children more often and makes them sicker than last year’s variants, adding that masks do not impede learning.
“There is lots of evidence that supports masking and there is no evidence that it causes any harm,” she said. “Children are much more adaptable than adults are.”
Florida and Texas combined make up 15% of the U.S. population but 28% of its recent covid-19 cases, according to the CDC, and both states have seen their hospitalization numbers skyrocket over the past two months. Arizona’s cases have jumped sixfold since June.
Mask rules in public schools vary widely. Eleven states require masks, including California, Illinois, Louisiana and Kentucky, while Florida, Texas and five other states prohibit mandates: Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa and South Carolina. Arizona’s ban takes effect Sept. 29. The other states leave the decision to local officials.
A LOSS IN TEXAS
The Texas Supreme Court on Thursday denied the Republican governor’s request to block temporary restraining orders on his ban on mask mandates, allowing schools that are requiring face coverings in defiance of the state to proceed.
The court, whose justices are elected and currently all Republicans, cited a provision of the Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure for why the request was denied. The one-sentence order provided no additional details.
The court rejected Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to block restraining orders issued by Travis County Judge Jan Soifer. Parents in Travis County, home to Austin, with children younger than 12 who are not eligible to be vaccinated, filed the case, saying Abbott’s ban on mask mandates was a threat to public health. Soifer barred enforcement of Abbott’s ban, clearing the way for mask requirements in Harris County, home to Houston, and eight school districts.
The Travis County judge said she was concerned that Abbott’s order was “prohibiting a requirement that the schools and the local authorities and the people who generally Texas relies on to make decisions for its citizens think are necessary.”
Following the state Supreme Court’s order, Paxton’s challenge will be heard by the Third Court of Appeals, where the majority of the Austin judges are Democrats. Whenever the Third Court rules, that decision is expected to be appealed, which would send the subject of mask mandates in schools back to the Texas Supreme Court.
The Texas Education Agency has suspended enforcement of Abbott’s ban in the state’s public school systems. It noted in a public guidance letter that the ongoing court challenges pushed the agency to drop enforcement.
The statewide debate over mask mandates in schools has intensified at a time when coronavirus has spiked in Texas thanks to the highly transmissible delta variant and millions of people who remain unvaccinated.
Abbott, who tested positive for the virus this week, is among the Republican governors who have resisted public health mandates aimed at stemming the tide of the delta variant, saying parents should decide whether their children wear masks in school. But surging infections and hospitalizations in Texas have left many parents worried about sending their children back into classrooms where others are not masked and could transmit the virus.
Less than 46% of Texans are fully vaccinated.
CRITICISM OF BIDEN
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt criticized both an Oklahoma school district that adopted a mask mandate and President Joe Biden over comments that the state’s school mask mandate ban may violate a coronavirus aid package.
The Republican governor and state Attorney General John O’Connor released a statement Thursday criticizing the Hulbert school district for its mask requirement.
“It is disappointing that one school district has chosen to openly violate a state law that was supported by 80 percent of the Legislature,” Stitt said.
The district’s policy includes an opt-out option for medical reasons. The governor last week praised two Oklahoma City districts for mask mandates that included opt-outs for medical, religious or personal reasons.
O’Connor said the law is constitutional and that the state is fighting a lawsuit challenging it.
Stitt criticized Biden after U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in letters to him and the state school superintendent that the school mask ban may violate the American Rescue Plan that provided $123 billion to the nation’s schools to help them return to the classroom.
“Oklahomans overwhelmingly believe parents should make decisions about their kids, not the government,” Stitt wrote.
PFIZER ON APPROVAL TRACK
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is pushing to fully approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine Monday, according to people familiar with the planning.
Regulators were still working through paperwork and negotiation with the company. The people familiar with the planning, who were not authorized to speak publicly, cautioned that the approval might slide beyond Monday if some components of the review need more time.
An FDA spokesperson declined to comment.
The approval is expected to pave the way for a series of vaccination requirements by public and private organizations that were awaiting firmer regulatory backing before implementing mandates. Federal and state health officials also are hoping that an approved vaccine will draw interest from some Americans who have been hesitant to get shots that are authorized only for emergency use.
Some universities and hospitals are expected to mandate inoculation once a vaccine is fully approved. The Pentagon said this month that it plans to make vaccinations mandatory for the country’s 1.3 million active-duty troops no later than the middle of next month, or sooner if the FDA acts earlier.
Information for this article was contributed by Adriana Gomez Licon,Terry Spencer and additional staff members of The Associated Press; by Meryl Kornfield and Timothy Bella of The Washington Post; and by Noah Weiland and Sharon LaFraniere of The New York Times.