All students in Miami and Broward public schools can opt out of wearing masks
After more than a year of having their children wear masks in schools, parents of all Miami-Dade and Broward county public school students can opt out of their districts’ mask mandates.
Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced his district’s decision Tuesday afternoon at a press conference, and the Broward County School Board voted Tuesday evening to make masks “strongly recommended, but not required,” for elementary and middle school students.
The decisions in both districts came because COVID-19 conditions in South Florida have improved markedly since the delta variant of the virus raged across the state this summer, with daily COVID case counts exceeding 10,000 and sometimes, 20,000 and up.
Miami-Dade parents can access the opt-out forms starting Wednesday at any school or on the school district’s website, Carvalho said. Full implementation is expected by Friday since students are off from school Thursday for Veterans Day.
In Broward, the policy change is effective Nov. 20. District 3 Board Member Sarah Leonardi was the only “no” vote because she said she wanted to wait until after winter break.
Broward board members wanted to wait until after the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID pediatric vaccine was available under Emergency Use Authorization for children between 5 and 11. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted that authorization on Oct. 29, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the vaccine on Nov. 2.
Miami schools to focus on deep learning losses
Carvalho said the district will now concentrate its efforts on remedying the learning losses that impacted children over the course of the pandemic, particularly children living in poverty, English language learners and students with disabilities.
“We are focusing our attention 100% on student achievement, student attendance and providing students with the opportunities they need to accelerate their learning towards their full potential,” Carvalho said. “This is the crisis across America right now, and now that there are no political distractions associated with something that was never political, it is time for our parents, our community, our community leaders, our teachers, our students, our support staff to rally around children and their academic achievement.”
Since the pandemic began in the winter of 2020, and students were sent home to learn remotely for the remainder of that school year — and with many students choosing to learn remotely the following school year — the district has seen a “double-digit percent loss in terms of proficiency in mathematics,” he said. Carvalho also noted there was “a significant loss in terms of English language arts and reading across all grade levels, but impacting most dramatically children who are fragile to begin with.”
The Miami-Dade announcement comes a little over a week after the district said parents of high school and middle school students not in K-8 Centers could opt out of the mask mandate by simply filling out a form. Along with elementary school students, students in the district’s 54 kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools still had to wear masks up until Tuesday’s announcement by Carvalho.
On Oct. 26, the Broward school board voted to relax the mask mandates for high school students, effective Nov. 1, but kept it in place, until Tuesday, for elementary and middle school students.
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Declining COVID cases in South Florida
The eased protocols are due to the declining number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in South Florida since the delta variant caused a spike in infections in Florida over the summer. Miami-Dade County announced Friday that masks were no longer required to be worn inside county buildings.
The Miami-Dade district’s COVID-19 dashboard, which reflects the most recent positive COVID cases among students and district employees, indicated there were 14 new student COVID cases as of Friday, Nov. 5, and zero employee cases. Since early October, the highest case count was on Oct. 8, with 46 new reported cases among students and 10 new cases among employees.
In Broward, the district’s COVID dashboard showed five new student COVID cases as of Nov. 5.
“The cases in our schools over the past five weeks, that’s total number of cases in all schools in Miami-Dade over the past five weeks has been, on average, less than 20,” Carvalho said.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the largest school district in Florida and the fourth largest in the country. It has about 254,000 students in traditional public schools. Broward County Public Schools is the sixth largest district in the nation with about 204,000 students in traditional public schools.
Three-quarters of all schools in the district posted no cases of COVID in the last week, Carvalho said. Two-thirds of those schools are elementary schools, he said.
“And, 99% of all schools, close to 100% of our schools, had less than three cases per school,” Carvalho said.
When Miami-Dade announced in August that masks would be mandatory at the start of the school year, it said the policy would be revisited on a weekly basis and altered as COVID rates came down. The district has been conferring with a medical task force comprised of public health experts and infectious disease physicians in establishing its protocols during the pandemic.
Seven key COVID metrics used amid pandemic
The district, in consultation with the medical task force advisers, established a list of seven key metrics that would have to be met before the district could relax its mask mandate.
Top on the list was the county achieving a COVID infection rate of fewer than 100 new cases per 100,000 residents for two consecutive weeks. That has been the case now for almost a month, and Carvalho said the rate was 71.9 cases per 100,000 residents last Friday.
“That means we have three full weeks below 100 cases per 100,000. That is terrific news as this probably stands as the most important metric we have followed,” he said.
The rate is particularly significant given that in mid-August, it was 738 cases per 100,000.
“So, we’ve seen a tenfold reduction in mid-August to where we are today,” Carvalho said.
State says Miami schools are now complying with DeSantis order
Miami-Dade County Public Schools was one of eight school districts statewide fighting with the DeSantis administration’s prohibition on mandating masks as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19 in schools. As of the end of October, the state had pulled $526,197 from Broward County Public Schools and $192,000 from Alachua County Public Schools in retaliation for school board members who voted for a mask mandate.
At the end of October, the U.S. Department of Education filed a complaint against Florida, asking an administrative judge to block the DeSantis administration’s actions. That case is pending.
Carvalho said the district still has not heard from the DeSantis administration about possible fines levied by the state for defying Tallahassee on mask mandates.
The Florida Department of Education said in an email to the Miami Herald Tuesday night that Miami-Dade County Public Schools was now in compliance with state law on mask mandates.
“We are very pleased to learn that Miami-Dade schools have reversed course and come into compliance with state law,” said DOE spokesman Jared Ochs. “We’re committed to continue working with their board and Superintendent Carvalho in our mutual effort to provide students with a world-class education.”
Carvalho said the district could relax the mask rules in large part because it listened to its task force of physicians rather than the state.
Students have been wearing masks in Miami-Dade public schools since early October 2020, when schools reopened to in-person learning after pivoting to remote learning in March 2020 when the pandemic began.
Carvalho said if conditions deteriorate like they did over the summer, the district is prepared to re-implement policies like mask mandates to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in schools.
“If there is a surge, a significant surge, we are poised, obviously, to take the appropriate steps to address these dynamic health conditions in our community,” he said.
Miami Herald Staff Writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 2:04 PM.
