TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis now supports a plan to withhold $200 million in funding from 12 school districts that mandated masks because of the pandemic, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
DeSantis is on board after discussions with state Rep. Randy Fine, who is proposing the budget measure, press secretary Christina Pushaw wrote in an email.
“The governor has been clear that he doesn’t want to take away any funding from students or teachers,” she wrote. “He is on board with the FEFP (Florida Education Finance Program) adjustment following discussions with Rep. Fine. The fines in this proposal would only impact administrators making $100k+, who were actually making the political decisions to force-mask children.”
It was school boards not school administrators, however, that made the decision to mandate masks for students, and the state fined those boards as a result, withholding money equivalent to school board members’ monthly salaries. Florida returned the money once mask mandates were lifted.
On Friday, DeSantis said he would not support Fine’s idea.
“My view would be let’s not do that,” DeSantis said during an appearance in Jackson County, when asked about Fine’s proposal. “But what you could do is say any parent whose kid was illegally force-masked this year in Florida in any of those districts, they should have the right to sue if their kids have any negative effects ... They flouted the law and they should be liable for the consequences of their actions.”
DeSantis remains committed to the idea of a private right of action for parents to sue if they think school mask mandates harmed their children, Pushaw said.
Fine, a Brevard County Republican, said on the House floor the governor is now supporting his proposal if it is tailored to take money away only from central administrative offices.
“After discussions personally that I have had with the governor over the last few days, the governor is in support of the concept,” he said. “I understand this is late-breaking news.”
Orange County Public Schools could lose $16.5 million if Fine’s measure was adopted. Two-thirds of the $200 million would come from South Florida. Miami-Dade could lose $72 million, Broward $32 million and Palm Beach County $28 million.
The Orange County School Board was in a workshop Tuesday when news broke of DeSantis’ change of opinion.
“I just read a tweet that Gov. DeSantis is supporting the $200 million from school districts,” said board member Angie Gallo. “It upset me. So excuse my lack of thought process right now.”
The amount each district would lose would be based on how many administrators are earning more than $100,000. OCPS school leaders said they have 92 such positions.
They have called Fine’s proposal unfair, unprecedented and possibly unconstitutional.
They and other school leaders said they enacted mask mandates in good faith as a way to keep students and staff safe during the surge in COVID-19 cases that coincided with August school openings. They noted both national and local medical experts recommended masks in schools as the delta variant led to a sharp increase in cases and hospitalizations.
In a letter to lawmakers sent last week, OCPS leaders noted that even when masks were optional at the start of the school year, more than 90% of OCPS parents sent their children to school wearing them, suggesting widespread support for the 60-day mask mandate the district imposed. The mandate ended Oct. 31.
The proposal to take money from the districts would be an “unprecedented punitive” redistribution of money in the state’s school-funding formula that aims to equalize per-student spending across the state, said the letter from Superintendent Barbara Jenkins and Teresa Jacobs, chair of the Orange County School Board.
School districts have the right to challenge state rules they think are improper, as Orange and others did with the state’s rule banning face mask mandates, the letter said, and Fine’s plan could violate the state constitution by imposing fines in ways state law does not allow.
Palm Beach County Superintendent Mike Burke said there’s no justification for the penalty Fine proposed because the school district complied immediately when mask mandates were declared unlawful on Nov. 19.
“Representative Fine’s proposal to claw back $28 million in funding for the upcoming school year is unfounded, unprecedented, and unjust,” Burke said in a statement.
Florida already spends less per-pupil than many states, he added, so “any dollars lost to such a punitive proposal would negatively impact the ability of our schools to meet the needs of our students.”
The Broward School District was disappointed in the governor’s reversal, said John Sullivan, director of legislative affairs.
“We hope the Senate will not agree to penalize administrators who have worked tirelessly to meet the unprecedented challenges caused by the pandemic, always focused on the health and safety of students and teachers,” Sullivan said. “This penalty would have a negative impact on the services the district is able to provide to our students.”
Senate President Wilton Simpson told reporters Thursday he had not closely examined the House’s proposal, but he supported the concept of holding organizations that don’t follow state law “accountable.”
Fine said the 12 school districts would still get more money this year than last but not as much as the 55 districts that did not require students to wear face masks. The 12 districts are in: Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Indian River, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, Sarasota and Volusia counties.
DeSantis issued a statement on Twitter on Tuesday about Fine’s proposal.
“Thanks to Speaker (Chris) Sprowls, Representative Fine, and the House of Representatives for heeding my call to protect students and teachers from accountability measures affecting union-controlled politicians and bureaucrats who defied Florida law by force masking kids,” DeSantis said in the tweet. “Most students didn’t want to wear masks in the first place! Let’s also give parents recourse for harms imposed on their kids due to this defiance. They should get compensated by academic, social, and emotional problems caused by these policies.”
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(South Florida Sun Sentinel staff writers Brooke Baitinger and Scott Travis contributed to this report.)
