A petition drive is underway to get the St. Johns County school board to require everyone to wear face masks in school buildings for the fall semester.
An executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis bars local school districts from enacting mask mandates for students. Noncompliance could mean a loss of state funding.
Still, the petition has gathered more than 1,000 signatures as of Tuesday morning.
The change.org petition cites spikes in cases and hospitalizations, as well as recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics that all students should wear masks — especially because vaccinations are not yet approved for children under 12.
It asks board members whether they’d risk their lives by spending eight hours a day in schools if they were neither masked nor vaccinated.
St. Johns County students head back to class Aug. 16.
Contact reporter Cyd Hoskinson at choskinson@wjct.org, 904-358-6351 and on Twitter at @cydwjctnews.
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