Trying to escape mask rules in public schools? Private schools may not be the answer

Image via AP.

Students who seek a publicly funded scholarship to a private school on the basis of “COVID-19 bullying” — being required to wear a face mask at their public school — could end up at schools with a face mask policy just as strict as the one they escaped.

Elite private schools such as The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Maclay School in Tallahassee and Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando are all beginning the school year requiring students to mask up, regardless of their vaccination status. Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale is also requiring all students in grades higher than kindergarten to wear face masks when indoors regardless of vaccination status. That’s the school that President Donald Trump’s son, Barron Trump, is rumored to be attending.

Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an emergency order on July 30 to stop public schools from enacting the same kind of mandate these private schools are putting in place. Many of the private schools announced in late July or early August that students coming indoors had to have their faces covered. It happened just as the state’s number of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations started increasing as the delta variant of the virus spread.

“The recent rise in numbers had us decide to pause our opt-out policy for right now,” said Kim McWilliams, director of marketing at Maclay School.

As a result of DeSantis’ emergency order, three public school districts — Alachua, Broward, and Leon counties — faced losing funding, specifically by an amount equal to the combined salary of those districts’ superintendent and School Board salaries. The order also prompted the Department of Education to expand the circumstances under which public students are eligible to a get a publicly funded Hope Scholarship to attend a private school.

The Hope Scholarship had been reserved for students who experienced battery, harassment, kidnapping, physical attack, robbery, sexual offenses, assault, threats, intimidation and fighting while at school.

With the new rules, students who don’t want to comply with a strict mask policy, like the ones in Broward and Alachua counties can can get a Hope Scholarship. And students who want to be an environment with all other students masked can get one too.

But the rules do not require that the receiving school have any particular policy about masks.

In some parts of the state, those students who apply for a Hope Scholarship because they want a mask-mandatory environment might not be able to find it, unless they go to an eligible boarding school. The Diocese of St. Petersburg, which covers five counties and runs 46 schools and childcare centers, for example, requires students be masked indoors regardless of vaccination status when the county positivity rate is higher than 10% and the new case rate is greater than 100 per 100,000 population, according to the Florida Department of Health website. But parents can opt out of masking their children, making the policy pretty hollow.

Diocese schools Superintendent Chris Pastera said he sought a policy that would be in harmony with the Governor’s order, even though it wouldn’t affect his salary if he did something different. Some of his students’ tuition is paid with public money.

“The way we’ve done things, I think is the best combination of keeping students safe and being respectful of appropriate laws, and parents’ wishes,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s any perfect solution out there.”

Legal challenge predicted

Sen. Gary Farmer of Fort Lauderdale predicts the Governor’s order and the ensuing rules will all be struck down under a legal challenge.

Already the flexibility in school masking rules has spawned a slew of lawsuits on behalf of students. They say the decision not to require universal student masking is putting vulnerable students at risk from those who are not following health advice of experts.  And that DeSantis’ action represents an overreach in his authority.

The Broward County schools also voted to engage outside counsel to fight the Governor’s order.

“The constitution requires a separation of power — the executive branch enforces the law, they don’t make the law,” Farmer said. “The Legislature directs the state agency when to engage in rule making. We never directed the state Education Department to deal with this issue and the statute is not written in a way that they could expand the Hope Scholarship in that matter.”

But Christina Pushaw, the Governor’s spokeswoman, said the emergency orders are grounded in an important law: the Parents’ Bill of Rights, signed this year.

“Parents have the right to make decisions about their kids’ health and education, and it’s only fair that every parent should have the freedom to choose whether to mask their own child or not,” she wrote in a text.

No data is available yet on how many children have sought the Hope Scholarship because of school face mask policies.

Mask confusion

The Archdiocese of Miami last week cited the guidance of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in deciding that vaccinated students old enough to be vaccinated at its 60 diocesan schools could be indoors without masks. Because students in elementary school can’t be vaccinated, they must be masked, the archdiocese said in a letter to parents. Lake Highland Preparatory School in Orlando cited the same sources in their decision to make student face masks mandatory indoors, however.

Meanwhile, Monteverde Academy, a private, prekindergarten through 12th grade school in Monteverde, is still trying to decide, according to a spokeswoman. School doesn’t start until Aug. 23.

Adua Curra, has two children attending St. Thomas Aquinas School in Fort Lauderdale, and another at a public school, West Glades Middle School in Parkland. She said she wishes masks weren’t part of the equation for her youngest when school starts Wednesday. The school is in Broward County, where the school district has announced plans to oppose the Governor’s order.

“Schools should stick to teaching math, science and maybe a little history,” she said. “Leave the health decisions to the parents.”

In Tallahassee, though, Rebecca Rhoden Ogletree was wishing her son in 10^th grade at Lawton Chiles High School was going to a school with a policy more like the private school up the road. Leon County public schools added the parental opt-out to its face mask requirement for students at the last minute before school started this week. But she was glad the district extended the face mask requirement up to 12th grade; it had been just prekindergarten through eighth-grade before.

She worries about what’s going to happen without universal masks for all students indoors.

“It’s disrespecting those who are trying to defeat this disease when you allow people to opt out (of wearing masks) without medical reasons,” she said. “It’s detrimental. We’re all in a battle to fight this thing.”