MIAMI, Florida — Two more Florida school districts are moving away from mandatory masks requirements, citing a decline in positive cases and the accessibility of COVID-19 vaccines.
Broward County School Board members voted to make masks optional but "strongly encouraged" beginning Nov. 20. Chair Dr. Rosalind Osgood says the board made the decision to revisit the school district's policy based on science.
"The fact that our positivity rate is down, we're seeing less and less students quarantine, we have vaccines more readily available to the community...," she said.
The school district's interim superintendent, Dr. Vickie Cartwright, added that elementary school students will be offered the opportunity to be vaccinated at certain schools on Nov. 10.
Florida's largest school district, on the other hand, is taking a different route with moving from mandatory masks to offering an opt-out.
Miami-Dade County Schools announced the new COVID-19 safety protocol on Tuesday, which applies to all grades and K-8 centers.
"Parents wishing to avail themselves of this provision will need to complete an opt-out form and return to their child's school," the district wrote on its Facebook page.
Employees who are fully vaccinated also have the ability to choose to not wear a face mask, the school district adds.
Parents who wish to opt their students out of wearing a mask can fill out the form here.
Both school districts were among those who pushed back against Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year over his administration's ban on mask mandates in schools.
The topic has been back-and-forth in the courts ever since, with the most recent ruling by an administrative judge stating DeSantis' administration can ban public school face mask mandates that don't let parents opt-out their kids.
The districts, the judge wrote, "failed to prove that the Emergency Rule Opt-Out provisions facilitate the spread of COVID-19 in schools."
Gov. DeSantis has stood firm on the belief that mask mandates violate the Parents' Bill of Rights he signed this summer. Parents say the state constitution gives schools the right to make their own mask policies.