TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis took a hard line on school reopenings Monday, standing firm against Florida’s third-largest school district in a showdown over classroom instruction and Covid-19.
DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran on Monday traveled to Hillsborough County to reiterate their case for re-opening schools just days after they rejected a plan from the county school district to hold online-only classes for its 223,300 students during the first four weeks of the fall semester slated to begin Aug. 24.
The potential educational benefits of in-person instruction outweigh the health risks of opening schools during the pandemic, DeSantis said at a Monday roundtable held at Winthrop College Prep Academy in Riverview.
“Some of this stuff is just not debatable anymore,” DeSantis said. “We’re going in a good direction in this area and that’s just the reality.”
Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, last month submitted a plan to reopen classrooms, but backtracked after local doctors warned that school closures were likely to ensue. The county revised its plan to limit classes to online instruction, but Corcoran on Friday rejected that approach, saying it denies parents the option of sending their children back 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 can revert to offering in-person and online classes, which it originally planned, or draw up a new plan that details how many students requested in-person learning and explains why Hillsborough can’t deliver on that option, Corcoran wrote.
Alternatively, the district can withdraw its reopening plan altogether, limit itself to online instruction, and run the risk of losing state funding.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a hard line on school reopenings today, saying the potential educational benefits of in-person instruction outweigh the health risks of opening schools during the pandemic. https://t.co/MgPElutudz
— POLITICO (@politico) August 10, 2020
A nation willing to sacrifice its own children to re-elect Donald Trump. This is going to be a bigger mistake than his early re-opening. Is DeSantis mentally ill or just that evil? We can already see the writing on the wall. The failure to force things to go back to normal and the virus makes a fool of us each and every time. Yet we never learn. We just continue to numbly watch the numbers rise and bury the bodies. It defies any logical explanation. I feel like I’m living in an alternate universe. This country clearly is incapable of handling any kind of national emergency. No sense of self-preservation.
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