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 At a day-long meeting that grew contentious at times, the Miami-Dade
County School Board voted to require most of the district's 360,000
students, as well as staff, to wear face coverings when classes
begin on Monday. Governor Ron DeSantis previously placed a ban on
local mask mandates.
“While I am a very, very strong advocate, and always have been, for
parental choice, what we are facing in our community is a public
health emergency where lives are at risk,” said board chair Perla
Tabares Hantman, who supported the mandate.
The requirement, which the board approved by a 7-1 vote following
the recommendation of its superintendent, exempts student who cannot
wear masks for medical reasons.
DeSantis last month signed an executive order barring local
officials from imposing mask mandates. Like some other Republican
governors, he has called mask-wearing a personal choice which for
students should be made by parents.
Miami-Dade joins at least two other counties that have bucked the
governor's order.
The state Board of Education on Tuesday voted unanimously to punish
Broward and Alachua counties for mandating masks in schools in
defiance of the governor's order, local media reported.
They are the first to be punished, although no specific actions have
been taken against them, the local media said.
DAILY DEATHS TOP 1,000
As officials across the South spar over mask mandates, COVID-19
deaths in the United States reached a five-month high on Tuesday.
More than 1,000 people were reported to have died on Tuesday, the
most in one day since March, after the virus death toll spiked over
the past month to a daily average of 769, according to a Reuters
tally https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps.
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In Tampa, Florida, nearly 5,600 students and over 300 employees of a
single school district remained in isolation or quarantine on
Wednesday after either catching COVID-19 or potentially being
exposed to it.
In Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, the school board
planned to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to determine the
best way to mitigate the spread of the virus.
Florida had the country's third largest number of new coronavirus
infections last week, while Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has
also been at odds with some local officials over masks, had the
12th, according to a Reuters tally.
The top 10 states with most new cases were all in the South.
Abbott, also a Republican, announced on Tuesday that he had tested
positive for COVID-19, despite having been fully vaccinated, but had
no symptoms of the illness.
The school district in Paris, Texas, about 100 miles (160 km)
northeast of Dallas, took a novel approach in its disagreement with
the governor, making face masks part of the dress code for its
nearly 4,000 students.
"The Board believes the dress code can be used to mitigate
communicable health issues, and therefore has amended the (Paris
Independent School District) dress code to protect our students and
employees," the board said in a statement on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Peter Szekely and Tyler Clifford in New York and
Anurag Maan in Bangalore; Editing by Howard Goller)
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