As Covid-19 cases rise in Florida, governor says parents should decide if their children wear masks at school

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The order comes in response to “several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask warrants,” the governor’s office said, and is intended to “protect the freedom of parents to choose whether their children wear masks.”

The Broward County School Board voted on Wednesday to impose masks after a meeting earlier this week was postponed amid protests from a group opposing the masks. Public schools in Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest school district, have announced that they are reviewing their optional mask policy. Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said the district would announce its final decision on masks about two weeks before the start of the school year. The district also announced Thursday that face coverings will be mandatory on school buses.
At an event earlier Friday, where DeSantis first announced he would be issuing the order, he said that “many Florida schoolchildren have suffered from forced masking policies, and it is prudent to protect the ability of parents to make decisions about the wearing of masks by their children. “
Joann Marcus of Fort Lauderdale, left, applauds as he listens to the Broward School Board emergency meeting on Wednesday, July 28. A small vocal group spoke out vehemently against the masks, saying their personal rights were being eroded and their children were suffering socially.
In Florida, the number of new cases reported over a week jumped more than 50% in the week ending July 29, according to a weekly status report released by the state’s health department. More than 110,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported that week, up from more than 73,000 the week before. In early June, the state was reporting about 11,000 new cases per week.

But the governor has repeatedly doubled down on the fact that he will not let schools require masks for their students. On Monday, DeSantis met privately with a panel of experts who effectively bolstered their positions on school mask mandates.

“Our point of view is that it absolutely shouldn’t be imposed, it shouldn’t be mandated,” DeSantis said at the roundtable. “And our legislature is confident that if you start to see a push from the federal government or some of the local school districts.

DeSantis kicked off the roundtable by saying the event was about science, but absent in the room, according to the transcript released by his office, were Covid-19 experts from his home state, including his own. general surgeon, Dr Scott Rivkees. Among those in attendance was Dr Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University who co-wrote a statement in 2020 that called for allowing the coronavirus to spread among the population to gain herd immunity.

Anti-mask protesters forced Florida school board to postpone back-to-school demands meeting

DeSantis called the steps taken to stop the spread of Covid-19 among children “untold burdens on the most defenseless and least dangerous segment of our society when it comes to this, children.”

A day later, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that localities encourage all students, teachers, staff and visitors to wear masks in schools, regardless of their immunization status.

In a statement following CDC guidelines, the governor said that “masking children can negatively impact their learning, speech, emotional and social development, and physical health,” without citing any evidence.

DeSantis added that “COVID is not a serious risk to healthy children” – a statement that contradicts CDC evidence showing that the virus can also pose a serious risk to children.

CDC data shows that more children have died from Covid-19 than from the flu each year, even in a bad flu year. Covid-19 can also cause a rare but dangerous condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children or MIS-C.

Additionally, there is no scientific evidence that the risk of wearing masks outweighs the benefits. There is no evidence that masks affect learning, speech, or emotional development or can cause bacterial infections.

CNN’s Maria Cartaya, Maggie Fox, Deanna Hackney, Brandon Miller and Hollie Silverman contributed to this report.

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