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Students return to school at Seminole Heights Elementary School on August 31, 2020 in Tampa, Florida. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order barring public schools from mandating masks as the school year begins, but several districts are defying the order. (Photo: Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
Forced to make a choice between keeping schools fully funded and protecting children and educators, at least four school districts in Florida plan to defy Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis's order blocking mask mandates as the school year begins, citing the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant.
"Now that students are required to return to school in person, prohibiting mask mandates is an action of the state that affirmatively puts them in danger."
--Bacardi Jackson, SPLC
"The fact that we were able to achieve the creation of this vaccine--a very effective vaccine in the time frame that we did--has been absolutely amazing," the essay reads. "It just blows my mind that we can receive such a great opportunity and then, as a society, fail to take advantage of it and cause hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. The scientific community really stepped up and has done amazing things during this pandemic to try and help people keep people safe, and we ended up seeing politicians just trying to counteract and fight against that at every turn."
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Forced to make a choice between keeping schools fully funded and protecting children and educators, at least four school districts in Florida plan to defy Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis's order blocking mask mandates as the school year begins, citing the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant.
"Now that students are required to return to school in person, prohibiting mask mandates is an action of the state that affirmatively puts them in danger."
--Bacardi Jackson, SPLC
"The fact that we were able to achieve the creation of this vaccine--a very effective vaccine in the time frame that we did--has been absolutely amazing," the essay reads. "It just blows my mind that we can receive such a great opportunity and then, as a society, fail to take advantage of it and cause hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. The scientific community really stepped up and has done amazing things during this pandemic to try and help people keep people safe, and we ended up seeing politicians just trying to counteract and fight against that at every turn."
Forced to make a choice between keeping schools fully funded and protecting children and educators, at least four school districts in Florida plan to defy Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis's order blocking mask mandates as the school year begins, citing the spread of the Covid-19 Delta variant.
"Now that students are required to return to school in person, prohibiting mask mandates is an action of the state that affirmatively puts them in danger."
--Bacardi Jackson, SPLC
"The fact that we were able to achieve the creation of this vaccine--a very effective vaccine in the time frame that we did--has been absolutely amazing," the essay reads. "It just blows my mind that we can receive such a great opportunity and then, as a society, fail to take advantage of it and cause hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. The scientific community really stepped up and has done amazing things during this pandemic to try and help people keep people safe, and we ended up seeing politicians just trying to counteract and fight against that at every turn."