{"id":50414,"date":"2021-09-08T20:24:35","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T00:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=50414"},"modified":"2021-09-08T20:24:44","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T00:24:44","slug":"lee-county-school-officials-stand-by-the-30-day-mask-mandate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/09\/lee-county-school-officials-stand-by-the-30-day-mask-mandate\/","title":{"rendered":"Lee County school officials stand by the 30-day mask mandate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The ongoing mask mandate debate in Florida schools continues to play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The school districts of Alachua, Broward, and Orange counties have filed lawsuits against the state health department for trying to limit the school’s ability to require masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Lee County has not agreed to join the districts. Instead, they said they are weighing their options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Board members met on Tuesday to discuss the district growth of nearly 95,000 students. 3,800 of those students got COVID-19 this year alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The School District of Lee County released the following statement to the Florida Department of Education on Wednesday morning:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The School District of Lee County has a constitutional duty, statutory authority, and primary responsibility to provide a safe learning environment for all students and employees.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the start of this year, we have had students and staff members hospitalized, and have had employees pass away from this deadly virus. We have had to close 92 classrooms compared to 76 during the entire 2020-21 school year. This yields over a 1089% increase in weekly classroom closures during a surge in COVID-19 like we have never before experienced.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We view 30 days of temporary masking, during conditions far worse than at any point during this pandemic, as imperative to containing the spread of a highly contagious virus, and to protect and possibly save lives.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the position of this District that our temporary masking requirement, along with all our other mitigation efforts, is necessary, reasonable, narrowly tailored, and least restrictive to address the health crisis in our community.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rob Spicker, spokesperson for the School District of Lee County<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judge Cooper, who ruled districts can order masks be worn by students, is expected to issue a stay of his order in court Wednesday. The matter would then go onto an appellate court since the Florida Governor appealed the ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attorney Michael Hornung suspects Judge Cooper\u2019s ruling would be overturned in a higher court, citing a different interpretation of the Parents\u2019 Bill of Rights which is part of the state constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite that, parents protested last week against the district-imposed 30-day mask mandate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents are expected to show up again during a Wednesday board meeting although the mask mandate is not on the agenda. The matter could be brought up in public comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ongoing mask mandate debate in Florida schools continues to play out. The school districts of Alachua, Broward, and Orange counties have filed lawsuits against the state health department for… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":50415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[659],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50416,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50414\/revisions\/50416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}