Florida Governor’s Anti-Mask Stance Causing Conflict With Schools, Parents

The Washington Post: Florida School Board Threatens Legal Action To Keep Mask Mandate Despite Ron DeSantis Ban
Florida’s second-largest school system is threatening legal action to challenge the ban on mask mandates by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), as it voted to keep its own requirements in place for students and staff. The Broward County school board – which voted 8-1 on Tuesday to uphold its mask mandate despite DeSantis’s move to curb such restrictions and subsequent threat to stop paying superintendents and school board members who defy his orders – said in an evening news conference that it told its legal counsel to prepare a challenge. (Pietsch, 8/11)

WUSF Public Media: Manatee, Pinellas Schools Stay With Mask-Optional Policies 
Despites pleas from concerned parents and advice from national medical groups that mask wearing should be universal in schools this fall, school boards in Manatee and Pinellas counties decided Monday to stick with the mask-optional policies. Florida is experiencing record numbers of coronavirus cases, with 28,317 new cases on Saturday and another 28,317 on Sunday, plus a new high for hospitalizations statewide 13,977, according to official figures Monday. (Sheridan, 8/10)

CNN: Parents Of Florida Students With Disabilities Are Taking A Stand Over Masks. They're Suing Gov. DeSantis 
Will Hayes was supposed to start the new school year Tuesday, but instead he's staying home because of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban on mask mandates in schools, his mother said. Will, 10, has Down syndrome and other underlying health conditions, but has always been included in a general education class in a public K-8 school his mom, Judi Hayes, told CNN's Brianna Keilar. Now, because her son is immunocompromised, she says his health will keep him from attending school with his peers in the Orange County Public Schools district. (Ebrahimji, 8/10)

The Daily Beast: Florida’s School COVID War Is Somehow Uglier Than Ever, ‘Like They’re Throwing Us Into A Gladiator Pit’
With the Delta variant running rampant across Florida and cases of extremely sick children on the rise, Jerry Greenberg is terrified about sending his kids back to school in Pinecrest, an incorporated village in Miami-Dade County. The 47-year-old has an 11-year-old daughter set to start sixth grade at Palmetto Middle School and a 14-year-old son poised to begin ninth grade at Palmetto Senior High. But with public school leaders across the state facing off against Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has insisted on banning mask mandates for kids, Greenberg is mulling a radical change. (Alvarado, 8/10)

KHN: DeSantis’ Executive Order Is Misleading About Lack Of Scientific Support For Masking In Schools
On July 30, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order stating that schools couldn’t mandate that their students wear masks, and that it should be up to parents to decide whether they want their children masked in school buildings. The order also said the state can deny funding to districts that don’t comply. One part of the order particularly caught our attention because of what it said about masks: “WHEREAS, despite recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ‘guidance,’ forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification; indeed, a Brown University study analyzed COVID-19 data for schools in Florida and found no correlation with mask mandates.” (Knight, 8/11)

Also —

NBC News: U.S. Sends Hundreds Of Ventilators To Florida As Covid Surge Continues
The federal government has sent hundreds of ventilators and other equipment this week to help Florida respond to a record number of Covid hospitalizations. The devices, which came from the federal government's Strategic National Stockpile, included 200 ventilators and 100 smaller breathing devices and related supplies, said an official of the Department of Health and Human Services. (Pettypiece, 8/10)

Fox News: CDC Adjusts Florida COVID-19 Numbers After Health Department Call-Out
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday updated its COVID-1 tracker for Florida over the past few days after the state’s department of health appealed publically for an update. The CDC told Fox News in an email on Tuesday that it was working with the state’s health department to correct the information. The state took to Twitter on Monday to ask the CDC to update its COVID-19 case tracker because it incorrectly combined "MULTIPLE days into one." The Sunday total was the state’s worst ever, according to the CDC data. (DeMarche, 8/10)