Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said Monday that the state board of education could take action to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who disobey the governor’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates for school districts. The move escalated the governor’s fight over the issue.
DeSantis signed an executive order prohibiting local school mask mandates last month. Multiple lawsuits have been filed since the executive order’s issuance, challenging its constitutionality and legality.
In at least one case, a school district has said that masks will be required unless parents opt-out.
It was announced Monday that the state board of education “could move to withhold the salaries of district superintendent’s or school board members.”
In a statement last week, DeSantis’ said, “I think the fairest thing to do is just say let parents make the decisions.”
On Sunday, a GOP Senator disagreed with DeSantis’ ban on local officials imposing mask mandates.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, told CNN’s Dana Bash, “The local official should have control here. I don’t want top-down from Washington, DC. I don’t want top-down from a governor’s office.” He added, “When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital is full and my vaccination rate is low, and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their community.”
After Cassidy made his comments, the Florida Democratic Party addressed DeSantis’ stance on Monday.
It tweeted, “Gov. DeSantis, if you won’t listen to pleas from worried parents, students, and children from across Florida, will you at least listen to physician and GOP Senator @BillCassidy? Local school boards should decide on public health measures, not Tallahassee.”
Dr. Tom Frieden, a former CDC director, said, “What the virus does is it preys on any divisions in society,” he told CNN. “And it is extremely disappointing to see governors around the country banning things that would save lives and keep our kids and teachers in school learning. You can fight this virus either with science or without it.”
Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that DeSantis’ and Gregg Abbott’s positions are “so self-defeating.” He also mentioned that there was a rise in children being hospitalized.
He said, “and for the first time that I can remember since the start of this pandemic, we’re seeing kids in pediatric intensive care units in large numbers to the point where even pediatric intensive care units are getting overwhelmed,” adding “That can be attributed in part to another respiratory virus, but a lot of it is Covid-19 as well.”
“If we’re already seeing Covid-19 pediatric ICU admissions in children’s hospitalizations before school’s open, what’s going to happen after that?” he said. “Schools are going to be an accelerant for this if we don’t have all of those kids masked.”
According to DeSantis’ executive order, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s school mask guideline “lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.
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