$12M Funding Cut Suggested For Sarasota County Schools Over Mask Mandate: Report

SARASOTA, FL — Under a measure introduced by a top Republican lawmaker, Sarasota County Schools would lost $12 million in funding for adopting a mask mandate during the COVID-19 surge driven by the delta variant at the start of the 2021-22 school year.

State Rep. Randy Fine, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, proposed the budget cut as part of $200 million in cuts to the 13 Florida school districts – including Sarasota County – that defied Gov. Ron DeSantis by implementing a mask mandate to slow the spread of the virus, WWSB reported.

If it moves forward, the money would be distributed other school districts in the state, ones that never put a mask mandate in place during the delta surge.

”They didn’t defy the mask ban; they broke the law,” Fine said. “They acted in an illegal way, and they engaged in the second-largest, state-sponsored act of child abuse in the history of Florida.”

State Sen. Joe Gruters, a Republican from Sarasota and chair of the Florida GOP, opposes the budget cuts.

“We need every dollar,” he told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

The Sarasota County School Board approved its emergency mask mandate Aug. 20 as COVID-19 cases surged in the community and throughout the state. The district was one of several across Florida — including those in Alachua, Broward, Duval, Indian River, Leon, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Orange and Palm Beach counties — to enact emergency mask requirements at the start of the school year despite an executive order from Gov. Ron DeSantis banning mask mandates for the schools.

The school board stood by its mask mandate despite threats from the Florida Department of Education to withhold board members’ salaries for defying the state’s school mask policy.

In a letter sent to Richard Corcoran, the state's education commissioner, in September on behalf of the school board, attorney Daniel J. DeLeo said the board "contend(s) that its emergency face mask policy… is both lawful and compliant with the recently enacted HB 241 (2021) – the Parents' Bill of Rights."

In his letter, the lawyer said that one of the statutes of the Parents' Bill of Rights "creates a statutory framework for evaluating the interplay between fundamental parental rights and conflicting governmental actions."

This Florida Statue, 1014.03, prohibits governmental institutions, including school boards from "infring(ing) on the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of his or her minor child without demonstrating that such action is reasonable and necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and that such action is narrowly tailored and is not otherwise served by less restrictive means,” DeLeo said.

The attorney argued that Sarasota County's emergency mask policy complies with this standard, while the Florida Department of Health’s emergency rule on masks "inadequately implements the same statutory provision."

DeLeo added, "Specifically, the emergency DOH rule — which requires absolute parental opt out to face mask mandates without satisfaction of any preconditions — is unlawful because it wholly fails to consider a school board's constitutional and statutory obligations to govern in furtherance of student health, safety and welfare during a global pandemic. In other words, the (district's) emergency policy is within the lawful parameters of the (Parents' Bill of Rights) framework while the emergency DOH rule — at least as it is interpreted by DOE — is not."

He added that "because the emergency DOH rule fails to account for a school board's right to enact procedures that conflict with fundamental parental rights when warranted by compelling interests, it is arbitrary, overbroad in its application, beyond or inconsistent with delegated authority, ultra vires, and, as a result, unlawful."

His letter also contended that it was "compelling" and "reasonable" for the Sarasota County School Board to enact its emergency policy because of "the immediate and recent threat to student health, safety and welfare posed by COVID-19 in Florida and Sarasota County."