BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – The Brevard County School Board will discuss mask policies at a Thursday board meeting, its last before the start of the new school year. The topic is certain to draw passions from parents on all sides of the issue and the board is braced for heated debate.
Masks were not on the initial agenda for the meeting, according to News 6 partner Florida Today. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance recommending that all teachers, staff and students of K-12 schools wear masks regardless of vaccination status. The agency’s May guidance had said fully vaccinated people were safe to stop wearing masks in public.
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Board member Jennifer Jenkins said she requested a discussion about mask policies be added to the meeting’s agenda Wednesday morning after receiving hundreds of emails on the topic.
“Ninety-nine percent of them were requesting that masks be reinstated or some kind of middle ground where there’s a classroom at each grade level where masks are required,” Jenkins said. “That’s not really feasible or possible, but people are kind of trying to propose things to keep their kids safe.”
Debates on mask policies have dominated the public comment sections of School Board meetings throughout the pandemic, with sometimes dozens of speakers sharing emotional arguments against and in favor of masks. Parents have also staged protests against masks outside meetings. The school district required masks for most students during the 2020-2021 school year, but rescinded the policy at the end of the spring semester.
Cases have surged in Brevard and across the country in recent weeks, prompting the return of certain COVID-19 mitigation tactics. Locally, Health First and Parrish Medical Center have again banned elective surgeries at their facilities, and Health First has set up COVID-19 overflow tents to deal with rising cases.
Brevard’s most recent data release on Friday showed a weekly increase of 2,166 cases, over twice the case rate of the previous week. Over 48,000 cases have been reported in the county. Vaccines are not available yet for children under 12, but the rate of serious illness in children is lower than that of older adults; on Wednesday, officials at Health First and Parrish said they had no COVID-19 patients under 18 in their hospitals.
It’s unclear how much leverage local school boards have to put mask mandates in place for students. State officials, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, have voiced disapproval of mandatory masking, though no official executive orders or laws are in place. School districts around the state have discussed mask policies this week; so far, none have made them mandatory.
State Rep. Randy Fine wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday evening that the state would take action should the Brevard School Board make a move to require masks.
“I want to be clear — Florida will pre-empt Biden policy if needed,” Fine wrote. “This will NOT happen at government schools in Florida. Should local politicians in Brevard or elsewhere in the state attempt such, the Legislature shall return in special session to pre-empt their policy.”
School Board Vice Chair Matt Susin said several COVID-19 mitigation strategies are up for discussion at the meeting Thursday, including contact tracing, quarantine policies and volunteer access to schools.
“Masks are part of the conversation,” Susin said. “A lot of times we get caught up in, ‘are we gonna mask.’ We get caught on one of the smaller facets of the whole thing.”
But Susin said he was prepared to discuss mask policies if they came up, and said he had received plenty of emails about the issue from parents “on both sides of the aisle.”
Thursday’s school board meeting also serves as a public hearing on the district’s proposed 2021-2022 budget, and Jenkins said she has requested discussion on a potential equity audit following data showing black students underperform academically compared to white students.