In honor of schools reopening across Florida, district leaders face a multiple-choice question. Do they:
A: Stand up to Gov. Ron DeSantis and require students to wear a face mask, essentially calling his bluff.
B: Go along to get along by leaving masks optional, thus ensuring no risk of lost funding.
Some large districts chose answer A. Sort of.
Districts in Orange, Broward, Leon, Alachua, and Duval counties say students have to wear face coverings. These happen to be five large districts with a combined student population of more than 660,000.
The state’s largest district, Miami-Dade County, planned to make masks optional but now is reviewing that idea. Children must wear masks on school buses.
Hillsborough and Palm Beach counties decided that masks are required but parents could opt out. In Hillsborough, teachers can’t enforce mask mandates and those who aren’t compliant can’t be punished. Which, hmm, means they aren’t actually required and teachers can’t do much (anything) about that.
DeSantis drew national headlines for his executive order that bans local school districts from requiring students to wear masks. He said it’s up to parents to decide what their kids will or won’t do.
He’s not big on government requirements unless, of course, the requirements are his.
“It’s parents’ choice in Florida. And government can’t override the parents,” he said at a news conference in Tampa.
Actually, government overrides parents all the time. Remember that the next time you buckle your kid into a car seat or make sure they get their mandatory vaccinations before starting school.
Police can arrest parents who discipline their children too harshly. A parent can’t leave their toddler or infant alone and choose to go to a bar.
Still, DeSantis threatened to withhold vital funds from districts that didn’t kiss his, um, ring. A lot of legal experts don’t believe his order has the teeth to do that, though.
Democratic Sen. Gary Farmer sent a letter to Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran saying exactly that.
He wrote, “It should be noted first and foremost that the Governor does not have the statutory authority to instruct your department to engage in rulemaking, nor does your department have the authority to do so on this particular issue.”
As gung-ho as DeSantis is these days, would he really follow through on the threat to withhold funds from large districts who don’t buy what he’s selling? The prospect of those districts running out of money and potentially shutting down wouldn’t play well in his 2022 (and beyond) campaign.
That may explain why parents who oppose masks could have another option. There’s an idea floating around to provide those parents scholarships to send their kids to charter schools that don’t require face coverings.
It’s a dubious strategy for parents and, especially, their children. In the last few weeks, the delta variant of COVID-19 impacted more young, unvaccinated kids. However, many people planted their flags in the no-mask zone, choosing to believe that a mask violates their civil liberties.
At a certain point, you have to let them make a choice. Just remember those who agree with studies that show masks are effective have rights, too.
OK, on to our weekly game of winners and losers.
Winners
Honorable mention — Florida cruise ships: After a lost season in 2020 because of you-know-what, things are picking up.
Port Canaveral has three more ships about to sail with paying customers: Disney Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise Line.
The Orlando Sentinel reported the Disney Dream would depart Monday for the Bahamas after receiving its conditional sailing certificate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ship did a simulated sail run in July and a practice run with Disney employees.
Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, an Oasis-class ship, will become the largest cruise ship in the world to return to service since the pandemic. It can accommodate 6,780 passengers, but will sail with reduced capacity.
Royal Caribbean has already put ships in service out of PortMiami and Port Everglades, but not an Oasis-class ship yet.
Other ships will follow.
The biggest winner(s) — Nikki Fried and Charlie Crist: Normally, we divide this up into “the almost (but not quite) biggest winner” and, as you can see, “The biggest.”
However, for the first time since we’ve been doing this, we have a tie. It’s between the top two Democratic contenders in the 2022 gubernatorial race.
After some initial stumbles, Fried is on a roll. She seized the opening DeSantis offered on schools and masks to symbolize opposition to what she says is authoritarian rule by the Governor.
Fried and the White House are studying ways to subvert DeSantis’ school funding threats over masks. She began releasing COVID-19 infection and hospitalization data after weeks of silence about that from DeSantis.
In early polls, she still trails Crist, but her populist message to teachers and parents that “we’ve got your back” could resonate with those weary of DeSantis’ threats.
POLITICO reported Fried received $50,000 from Miami health care billionaire and former GOP donor Mike Fernandez. He chose independence after Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party.
Crist, meanwhile, received a rocket boost in his campaign when St. Pete Polls showed him ahead of DeSantis by 1% in a theoretical matchup. The poll had only a 1.6% margin of error. It garnered national attention and showed that Florida remains a divided state.
The Miami Herald reported Crist would spend the next week speaking in Hispanic communities throughout Florida.
It’s called the “Oportunidad Para Todos/Opportunity for All” tour and will hit parts of Central Florida and South Florida. Tampa, Kissimmee, Miami, Homestead, and parts of Broward County are also on the agenda.
He also plans to host roundtables with Cuban, Mexican, Venezuelan, and Puerto Rican leaders.
Losers
Dishonorable mention — Peter Feaman: CNN reported Feaman, a lawyer and RNC committeeman from Boynton Beach, compared the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine efforts to Nazi-era “brownshirts.”
Um, he might want to modify that talking point. The brownshirts were part of a regime that slaughtered 6 million Jews. The Biden administration wants people to take vaccine shots so they won’t get sick and possibly die.
Ah, but CNN added that Feaman called vaccines “the mark of the beast” — a symbol of end times in the book of Revelation.
Well, sometimes it does seem that way, but not for reasons Feaman allegedly implied. Nope, this is more sinister. Hyperbole routed reasoned discussion, and facts trail late in the game versus the Q-crew.
We keep pointing things out, though, and the perpetrators either deny it or blame Nancy Pelosi.
In a text to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Feaman called the CNN report “fake news.”
CNN said Feaman’s comments came on a private message platform MeWe.
The report said Feaman wrote on July 20, “The Biden brown shirts are beginning to show up at private homes questioning vaccine papers,” suggesting government officials would go to people’s homes to verify their vaccination status.
That suggestion really is fake news.
Michael Barnett, the Palm Beach County Republican Party Chairman, told the Sun-Sentinel that Feaman holds deep convictions and passionate beliefs.
“While I am not as creative with my language as Peter, I agree that Americans should be concerned with the current administration’s potential for intruding into our private lives in general and regarding whether we are vaccinated or not,” he said.
Passionate beliefs are fine if they are grounded in common sense. Not protecting yourself against a deadly virus and then likening it to one of the darkest times in history lacks that.
Almost (but not quite) biggest loser — Spirit and Jet Blue airlines: We actually could call it Dispirited airlines because that’s how thousands of would-be passengers on the bargain-rate carrier feel.
We’ll get to that in a moment, but we first must mention Jet Blue.
After teasing that it would move its headquarters from New York to Florida, Jet Blue’s CEO decided, nope. Instead, it will expand its terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The airline already has a training center in Orlando and a subsidiary based in Fort Lauderdale for vacation planning and other non-air travel products.
Jet Blue’s main headquarters has been in the Queens borough of New York since the company’s founding in 1998.
It’s disappointing for Florida, of course. But light a candle for the fed-up passengers of Spirit, based in Miramar.
The “perfect storm” cliché is apropos for Spirit, which canceled more than 1,700 flights in the last week, affecting thousands of passengers. Many of those people vowed never to use the cut-rate airline again.
A combination of factors — weather, a lack of pilots and flight attendants, and work regulations — left Spirit in a mess that rivals anything a major U.S. airline has seen in decades.
“We’ve worked hard really over the last five years at both building Spirit and building its reputation,” CEO Ted Christie said. “I think we’ve made tremendous strides. This is not our proudest moment, and we know that.”
Not their proudest moment?
That’s one way of putting things.
The biggest loser — Rick Scott: The former Florida Governor and current U.S. Senator has a finely honed sense of timing in a crisis. Anyone who has seen him in a U.S. Navy ball cap can attest to that.
So, what was he thinking when he said, “As I travel around Florida, I talk to families about the biggest issues they deal with. The biggest issue they’re dealing with now is inflation.”
Huh? Inflation?
Check the COVID-19 numbers lately?
Two words: delta variant.
Maybe folks at the polo club and other private joints most don’t have enough money to join talk about inflation. But in the everyday world where people worry about their kids, spouses, and jobs, there are more pressing matters.
Staying alive and healthy is at the top of that list. And with the evil virus once again setting records for making people sick, that’s getting tougher.
Maybe Scott targets inflation so people will forget how he eviscerated Florida’s Medicaid program as Governor. He opted out of Medicaid expansion and wouldn’t build insurance exchanges.
In fairness, though, he was a leader in Wawa expansion for our state. Inflation’s not a problem there — most offer free air for your tires.
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