Broward County School Board Chair Rosalind Osgood believes that “the lives of the people in Broward county are invaluable,” and that’s why the board is standing firm on maintaining a mask mandate for the start of the school year, going against the DeSantis administration.
Her comments come as Broward and another district, Alachua, are now under scrutiny for noncompliance because of mask mandates in their districts. Alachua implemented a mask mandate for the first two weeks of school, with students able to opt-out with a medical exemption.
The Florida Board of Education has called an emergency meeting Tuesday at 4 p.m. to discuss noncompliance related to the two districts and presumably what to do about the situation.
The meeting will be on a conference call, the day before the State Board of Education has a regular monthly meeting taking place in Miami-Dade County.
Broward is still considering a lawsuit over the mask issue.
“As a school board member, I will not ever risk someone’s life in order to comply with any authority that’s trying to make me jeopardize people’s lives,” Osgood said during a Friday Zoom press conference with Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
Fried, who is looking to challenge Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 and is a Democratic gubernatorial candidate, has been holding regular conferences providing COVID updates to Floridians.
Osgood’s stance continues a raging debate about whether school districts should require masks for students as COVID cases surge in Florida or if those decisions should be left up to families. The majority of the Broward County school board voted this week to place a mask mandate on district schools, with student able to opt-out for a medical reason.
“We’re willing to take whatever the consequence is to make sure that another person does not die because we made a decision to put their lives at risk,” Osgood said.
She noted that three Broward educators with COVID died this week. The Broward County school district is set to start the school year on Aug 18. It’s one of Florida’s largest school districts, serving some 260,000 students.
Across Florida, the vast majority of districts have complied with mask optional policies or mask mandates with an easy parent opt-out process. Leon County schools, in the state capital, previously planned for a mask mandate but decided to comply with the DeSantis administration.
Osgood believes that the mask mandate is the right thing to do for her district, because health experts such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend everyone be masked in schools.
“I am blown away that this continues to be a discussion, that the threats continue to come, that it is not understood that masks are a tool that we can use to help save people’s lives,” Osgood said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier issued an executive order ensuring a parent’s right to “direct the upbringing, education, health care or mental health” of their student. The executive order, which was based on a law called the Parents’ Bill of Rights, prohibits school districts from infringing on that right, including mask mandates.
Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has threatened to cut some funding of school districts that implement mask mandates without an opt-out option.
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