Petition calling for St. Johns County school mask requirement garners more signatures

3 years ago 317

Petition for schoolhouse disguise request successful St. Johns County

An online petition calling for St. Johns County schools to enforce a disguise mandate erstwhile the caller schoolhouse twelvemonth begins has garnered much signatures.

As of Sunday, more than 4,200 radical had signed the petition -- up from 2,600 past week.

The petition cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation of cosmopolitan indoor masking for each teachers and students careless of vaccination status.

“How are we arsenic a schoolhouse territory ignoring our existent assemblage conditions and recommendations by nationalist and section wellness experts? How tin we support our students who are nether 12, and don’t person a prime for vaccination, safe?” says the petition created by Heather Prediletto and her radical Doctors & Community Members for Masks successful St. Johns County Schools.

It goes connected to state: “You whitethorn reason that children aren’t that affected and that they volition beryllium okay. I volition reason that 1 severely sick kid is 1 excessively many, and I’m not definite that this schoolhouse committee would privation to instrumentality that risk. Would you hazard your beingness by spending 8 hours a time successful the schools without being masked oregon vaccinated?”

St. Johns County School Board subordinate Beverly Slough said successful a communicative published Monday by Florida NewsLine that “CDC recommendations are conscionable that -- recommendations.”

“Our debased cases pb america to judge that we are successful bully stead to not necessitate masks,” Slough said. “We expect and look guardant to a precise mean schoolhouse twelvemonth with 100 percent in-person learning.”

Slough told News4Jax connected Thursday that the interrogation with NewsLine was conducted astir a period agone but did not accidental if her viewpoint has changed since then.

“Our territory continues to intimately show the situation,” she told News4Jax successful an email.

For now, masks are optional for nationalist schoolhouse students successful St. Johns County. The St. Johns County School District besides made the determination to region table shields and get escaped of somesthesia checks astatine schools for the upcoming schoolhouse twelvemonth that begins Aug. 16.

In May, dozens of radical flooded what turned retired to beryllium a heated St. Johns County School Board meeting to telephone for the extremity of the district’s disguise mandate. A petition posted astir that clip collected much than 2,200 signatures. The territory aboriginal made the determination to marque masks optional arsenic cases declined successful the county.

The radical for disguise mandates said it plans to be the adjacent schoolhouse committee gathering connected Tuesday to telephone for the change.

Florida’s Board of Education approved an exigency rule connected Friday that volition marque backstage schoolhouse vouchers disposable to parents who accidental a nationalist schoolhouse district’s mask-wearing requirements magnitude to harassment of their children.