The potential educational benefits of instruction in individuals outweigh the health risks of opening schools during the pandemic, DeSantis said Monday. | Joe Raedle / Getty Images
TALLAHASSEE – Gov. Ron DeSantis took a hard line at the opening of schools on Monday, standing firm against Florida’s third-largest school district in a showdown on classroom instruction and Covid-19.
DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran traveled to Hillsborough County on Monday to repeat their case to schools just days after rejecting a county school district plan to hold only online classes for their 223,300 students in the first four weeks of the fall-semester battle to begin August 24th.
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The potential educational benefits of instruction in individuals outweigh the health risks of schools opened during the pandemic, DeSantis said on a Monday afternoon at the Winthrop College Prep Academy in Riverview.
“Some of this stuff is just no longer debatable,” DeSantis said. “We are going in a good direction in this area and that is just the reality.”
Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, submitted a plan to open classes last month, but backtracked after local doctors warned that school closures were likely to occur. The county renewed its plan to limit classes to online instruction, but Corcoran on Friday rejected that approach, by saying that parents refuse the option of sending their children to school.
Hillsborough reported a 13 percent Covid-19 positivity rate on Monday, the fifth-highest in the state. School officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The district may return to offering classes for individuals and online, which it originally planned, or draw up a new plan that describes how many students have personally studied and explains why Hillsborough cannot deliver on this option, Corcoran wrote.
Alternatively, the district may resubmit its rescheduling plan, limit itself to online instruction, and run the risk of state funding.
Corcoran gave Hillsborough County until Aug. 14 to make a decision.
The standoff comes when the state defends a lawsuit from the Florida Education Association in which teachers challenge state policy, saying that pandemics create an unsafe environment in schools.
The Department of Education issued an emergency order in July requiring schools of brick and mortar to open by August 31, a mandate that is causing confusion among local leaders. The department has since shown up a willingness to let schools start online this year, but Corcoran took a harder line in his letter to Hillsborough: Classes for individuals are a must, unless the county is still in the early stages of reopening other parts of its economy.
Corcoran painted Hillsborough County on Monday as an outlier, as the majority of Florida’s 67 counties prepared for a mix of in-person and distance courses. Only the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe are considered to start the year with strict distance learning for most students.
Hillsborough County has the right to keep schools closed, Corcoran said, but the move is wrong by parents, students and teachers.
“We have 66 districts that are all very satisfied with the plans they have submitted,” Corcoran said Monday. “We had one district that submitted a plan, liked their plan and then suddenly came back.”
DeSantis and Corcoran on Monday answered reporters’ questions about the Hillsborough County case, saying the Tampa area is in much better shape than South Florida.
Hillsborough County reported 868 new Covid-19 cases over the last three days, compared to 4,205 in Miami Dade County, according to the Department of Health. The province has had 1,396 hospitalizations and 388 deaths. Broward County has reported 3,904 hospitalizations and 821 coronavirus deaths.
Democratic state lawmakers used Monday’s event to bash DeSantis on his response to the pandemic and schools. Sens. Janet Cruz (D-Tampa) and Lori Berman (D-Delray Beach) said the Republican governor should keep students safe instead of holding a “self-congratulatory tour.”
“The governor has failed miserably to lead this state through one of the worst disasters in our history,” Cruz wrote in a statement.
With teachers in at least 10 districts attending classes this week, the Florida Education Association’s lawsuit against the state is still pending. The case as of Friday has been assigned to a judge in Leon County, but no hearing is currently scheduled.
