On Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis was joined by State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to announce that the Florida Department of Health (DOH) issued a new rule, empowering families to decide whether their healthy child should be taken out of school after an exposure to COVID.
Emergency Rule 64DER21-15 prevents the unnecessary exclusion of healthy students from in-person schooling; safeguards the rights of parents and legal guardians and their children; provides health protocols for symptomatic or COVID-19 positive students, and provides opportunities for parents and legal guardians to choose which protocols to implement when their student has had direct contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19.
The new rule is effective as of yesterday, September 22, 2021.
“Parents have the right to have their healthy kids in school,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In-person education is important for a students’ wellbeing, their educational advancement, and their social development. The idea that schools are somehow a big problem when it comes to spread of the virus has been refuted yet again. Not only is the forced quarantining of healthy children disruptive to a student’s education, but many folks in Florida are not able to work from home. With this rule, we are following a symptom-based approach to quarantining students in Florida.”
Also at the Wennesday event were local educators, one of whom is also a parent struggling with the forced quarantining of his own children. Consistent with Florida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, the new DOH rule empowers parents to decide if their healthy child should quarantine.
Under the new rule, the only children required to quarantine are those that either test positive for COVID or who are symptomatic.
“Safety is our No. 1 priority, but learning is so critical for our students and our families here in Osceola County,” said Osceola County Superintendent Debra Pace. “When I looked at our data on day 15, 19% of our students either were quarantined or had been. That’s one in five, and that is devastating for families who have to go to work and have to make alternative arrangements for their kids. Yet, we are still continuing to see a decline in cases in that five- to 17-year-old age group. We are excited to have this new opportunity to let parents make decisions in the best interest of their students. Overall, we know that learning happens best when they’re in a classroom with a caring teacher, with their peers, and learning from each other.”
“As a principal, I have to make phone calls to parents or talk to students and say, ‘You know, I’m so sorry, you have to quarantine again’ or ‘Your son or daughter has to quarantine,’” said Principal James Long of Gateway High School. “To look them in the face and just see that disappointment of a kid who says, ‘Please [I do not want to be] quarantine[d] five times.’ Any opportunity to allow our students to have an option to stay in school and parents to have that option to keep their kids in school, I’m in favor of it because I really believe that that’s where kids need to be.”
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