Masks required for all adults, not students, in Miami-Dade schools beginning Monday
When classes resume Monday following a two-week winter break, all adults, including teachers, entering Miami-Dade schools will be required to wear masks, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho announced Thursday.
Students, however, will be “strongly encouraged” to wear masks while indoors, he said. Recent legislation that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law in November prevents the district from imposing a mask mandate for students, he said.
Nevertheless, officials are in discussions with School Board members and legal and medical experts to explore all available paths — including legal means — that would allow additional safety measures to be implemented for students, he said.
“It’s clear that the increase in cases is mainly driven by the highly contagious omicron variant,” Carvalho said outside the school district offices. “We are forced to do what we’ve done for a long period of time, which is embrace protective protocols” for the well-being of our students and workforce.
Bus drivers and spectators at school sporting events also will be required to wear masks.
Omicron forces districts in South Florida, nationally to amend policies
Miami-Dade is among a number of educational institutions and school districts nationally reversing policy or delaying the start of the second semester because of a surge of COVID-19 cases due to the convergence of the highly contagious omicron variant with the more deadly delta variant.
In Washington, D.C., for example, winter break in the public schools was extended by two days to give families time to pick up COVID-19 tests at schools and test students before returning to the classroom.
Locally, the University of Miami on Wednesday announced it would begin the spring semester with remote-only classes for the first two weeks. And in Broward County, the school board will hold an emergency meeting on Friday “for the purpose of amending its facial coverings policy.” Any changes, however, would “apply to staff, visitors, and vendors, not students,” according to a news release.
Like Miami-Dade, Broward attributed the possible change to the rapid spread of the omicron variant across the state and South Florida.
On Wednesday, Florida reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than 46,000 new COVID cases on Tuesday, a single-day record, based on Herald calculations of Florida’s data to the CDC. During the final week of class before the winter break, the Miami-Dade district reported 97 new COVID cases among students over a three-day period, compared with 72 during a five-day period the week prior, according to the district’s COVID-19 dashboard.
Still, it’s unlikely Miami schools will pivot back to remote learning. For one, Florida districts aren’t able to provide remote learning for students, Carvalho said. In September, DeSantis issued a rule that “prevents the unnecessary exclusion of healthy students from in-person schooling.”
Moreover, Carvalho said, many students fell behind while learning remotely, he said.
Another legal battle for Miami-Dade?
The change in mask policies in Miami-Dade schools come less than two months after Miami-Dade and Broward school districts relaxed their mask policies.
The two districts in August bucked DeSantis’ executive order announced in July prohibiting school districts in Florida from mandating masks. When schools started this year, Miami-Dade and Broward, along with a few other districts in the state, required masks for all, spurring a months-long legal battle. They only eased the mask rules when cases lessened in November.
But as concerns about the transmissibility of the omicron variant have grown, even among those vaccinated, Carvalho suggested legal action could again be used. That’s because, according to Carvalho, some of the laws passed in a special session of the Florida Legislature in November, including a law that bans school districts from passing mask mandates, “fall short.”
“The message I have (for Tallahassee),” he said, “is that we are doing all we can within the guidelines established but we are simultaneously pursuing and exploring all available options.”
Carvalho already penned a letter to Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran and DeSantis asking what steps school districts should take moving forward and the kind of assistance the state is willing to provide to school districts, he said.
For United Teachers of Dade President Karla Hernandez-Mats, whose union represents teachers, the responsibility to do the right thing falls on the governor.
“Now is the time for the Governor to act responsibly, lead this community, and provide a safe learning environment for our children,” she said in a statement. “Parents and teachers alike understand that masks reduce children’s risk of significant disease and this is the best way to ensure their safety and well-being.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2021 at 12:00 AM.
