Florida Department of Education holds emergency meeting

Fort Lauderdale, Florida – Friday the Florida Department of Education held an emergency meeting to consider allowing parents to transfer their children out of schools that impose mask mandates.

“We would say 100% of the emails we have received on the subject, or on this meeting, has to do with masks,” said Florida Department of Education officials.

If passed, parents would be allowed to access vouchers for private schools if they feel COVID protocols “pose a health or educational danger to their child.”

According to doctors in South Florida, there are patients as young as two weeks old.

“Just to give you an idea, in June we saw 17 patients in the hospital here at Nicklaus Children’s, we’re already at 25 for the month of August,” said Nicklaus Children’s Hospital Dr. Marcos Mestre.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently banned school districts from enforcing mask mandates, not long after Broward schools decided to put a mandatory mask policy in place.

Miami-Dade schools have not yet made a decision on the issue.

“This isn’t really about politics, it’s about science, it’s about health safety, and if we’re not serious about that, people die,” said Broward County Superintendent Robert Runcie.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, there are currently 157 children hospitalized due to COVID in Florida. Fifty-four of those submissions were made on Thursday.

At the moment Florida leads the nation in COVID hospitalizations for children.