Articles

Advice needed

Florida Politics / August 29, 2020

The controversy over reopening schools continues around the country, especially in Florida, where new events occur on an almost daily basis. One of those events came when 10 delegation Democrats wrote to Gov. Ron DeSantis blasting a recent directive given to county health directors not to provide advice to school boards on whether to reopen.

The DeSantis administration has ordered that schools could not refuse to reopen without advice from local health officials. Democrats, led by Hastings and Frederica Wilson of Miami Gardens, decried the move.

Frederica Wilson is among the Florida Democrats blasting Ron DeSantis for stopping health departments from advising schools on reopening.

"Florida became a global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in July," they wrote. "We strongly believe that now is not the time to silence experts or to place political considerations above health concerns, especially when the safety of our children is at stake, and that it is critical that health directors can freely and fully advise school boards during this unprecedented crisis."

Several county health directors told similar stories. They were not forbidden from providing any advice but were limited to advising how to reopen schools safely. They were prohibited from advising whether the risks of reopening were too great.

Hastings described the purpose of the letter as seeking "to stop the harmful politicization of critical public health decisions, rescind any directives that have been issued to health directors to censor themselves, and make it clear that health directors may issue informed advice without fear of reprisal."

Also signing the letter were fellow Democrats Crist, Deutch, Mucarsel-Powell, Kathy Castor, Val Demings, Lois Frankel, Al Lawson, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.