Mandate Masks in Brevard County Public Schools
Mandate Masks in Brevard County Public Schools
The Issue
Dear BPS Superintendent Mullins and School Board Members:
In light of the high rates of community transmission and the current guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the illegalities of the executive order signed in July by Governor DeSantis, we call on Superintendent Mullins and the Brevard County School Board to institute a mask mandate for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors.
The current recommendation of the CDC, updated on August 5th, state: “Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.” (1)
This is echoed by the American Academy of Pediatrics; “All students older than 2 years and all school staff should wear face masks at school (unless medical or developmental conditions prohibit use).”(2)
These recommendations are made as:
a significant portion of the student population is not eligible for vaccination
protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19 and to reduce transmission.
lack of a system to monitor vaccine status among students, teachers and staff
potential difficulty in monitoring or enforcing mask policies for those who are not vaccinated; in the absence of schools being able to conduct this monitoring, universal masking is the best and most effective strategy to create consisent messages, expectations, enforcement, and compliance without the added burden of needing to monitor vaccination status
possibility of low vaccination uptake within the surrounding school community
continued concerns for variants that are more easily spread among children, adolescents, and adults (2)
COVID-19 cases are on the rise in what the head of the CDC has called a "pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Brevard county is seeing over 620 cases per 100k residents and a 22% positivity rate; numbers astronomically higher than the 20-50 per 100k the CDC designates as a moderate risk of transmission in schools and significantly above the ‘Highest Risk of Transmission in School’ indicator (3)(4)
The Delta variant of the virus is also sickening children at a much greater, faster rate than the original strain. There were 27,454 pediatric cases documented in Florida between July 30th and August 5th; Or 1 of every 5 reported cases. At the same time last year the number was roughly 4,900.(4)
Our local hospitals are seeing the highest number of admitted COVID-19 patients to date, most of them unvaccinated, and the health care system is completely overwhelmed. Pediatric hospitalizations are also, sadly, on the rise with 135 children hospitalized in the last 7 days. Dr Joe Smith from Nemours hospital in Orlando stated, “It does seem to actually attack children and younger adults more aggressively than the previous strains we had moving through.” (5)
Additionally, we are learning that while most children recover from COVID infections just fine, there is a growing body of research that points to long-haul COVID-19 symptoms in children who had mild cases initially. Evidence from the first study of “long covid” in children suggests that more than half of children between the ages of 6 and 16 who contract the virus have at least one symptom lasting more than four months, with 43 percent impaired by these symptoms during daily activities. (6)
With no vaccine currently available for our younger children and the continued spread of the delta variant, the risk to our children is now significantly higher than it was last fall. The delta variant (R5-9) is much more transmissible than the original strain of the virus (R2), nearing that of chickenpox (R8.5).
From Dr. Juan Dumois, a pediatric infectious disease specialist: “This delta variant is so much more contagious than the COVID we were seeing a year ago that it is becoming one of the most contagious viruses we have ever seen. It is almost as contagious as chickenpox. Chickenpox is so contagious, that if you had a patient sitting in a room with chickenpox, someone walking by in the hallway outside the room, with that door open, could catch it. That's how contagious it was - just breathing the same air from an adjacent room.” (7) Without masks for all students & staff, the infection of an entire student body is not only a possibly, but an inevitability.
Within the last few days, many states and counties have revised their masking policies, choosing to follow the most recent scientific data in an effort to keep the children entrusted to them safe while at school.
You have worked hard to keep our children safe to date. As the numbers on the BPS Dashboard show, masks were effective last year at controlling the spread of Covid. We urge you to re-evaluate your plans for the upcoming school year in light of current guidance and local data. Thank you all for your leadership.
Signed,
The families of BPS students & concerned citizens
References:
(1) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html
(6) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/#__ffn_sectitle
The Issue
Dear BPS Superintendent Mullins and School Board Members:
In light of the high rates of community transmission and the current guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as the illegalities of the executive order signed in July by Governor DeSantis, we call on Superintendent Mullins and the Brevard County School Board to institute a mask mandate for all students, teachers, staff, and visitors.
The current recommendation of the CDC, updated on August 5th, state: “Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.” (1)
This is echoed by the American Academy of Pediatrics; “All students older than 2 years and all school staff should wear face masks at school (unless medical or developmental conditions prohibit use).”(2)
These recommendations are made as:
a significant portion of the student population is not eligible for vaccination
protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19 and to reduce transmission.
lack of a system to monitor vaccine status among students, teachers and staff
potential difficulty in monitoring or enforcing mask policies for those who are not vaccinated; in the absence of schools being able to conduct this monitoring, universal masking is the best and most effective strategy to create consisent messages, expectations, enforcement, and compliance without the added burden of needing to monitor vaccination status
possibility of low vaccination uptake within the surrounding school community
continued concerns for variants that are more easily spread among children, adolescents, and adults (2)
COVID-19 cases are on the rise in what the head of the CDC has called a "pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Brevard county is seeing over 620 cases per 100k residents and a 22% positivity rate; numbers astronomically higher than the 20-50 per 100k the CDC designates as a moderate risk of transmission in schools and significantly above the ‘Highest Risk of Transmission in School’ indicator (3)(4)
The Delta variant of the virus is also sickening children at a much greater, faster rate than the original strain. There were 27,454 pediatric cases documented in Florida between July 30th and August 5th; Or 1 of every 5 reported cases. At the same time last year the number was roughly 4,900.(4)
Our local hospitals are seeing the highest number of admitted COVID-19 patients to date, most of them unvaccinated, and the health care system is completely overwhelmed. Pediatric hospitalizations are also, sadly, on the rise with 135 children hospitalized in the last 7 days. Dr Joe Smith from Nemours hospital in Orlando stated, “It does seem to actually attack children and younger adults more aggressively than the previous strains we had moving through.” (5)
Additionally, we are learning that while most children recover from COVID infections just fine, there is a growing body of research that points to long-haul COVID-19 symptoms in children who had mild cases initially. Evidence from the first study of “long covid” in children suggests that more than half of children between the ages of 6 and 16 who contract the virus have at least one symptom lasting more than four months, with 43 percent impaired by these symptoms during daily activities. (6)
With no vaccine currently available for our younger children and the continued spread of the delta variant, the risk to our children is now significantly higher than it was last fall. The delta variant (R5-9) is much more transmissible than the original strain of the virus (R2), nearing that of chickenpox (R8.5).
From Dr. Juan Dumois, a pediatric infectious disease specialist: “This delta variant is so much more contagious than the COVID we were seeing a year ago that it is becoming one of the most contagious viruses we have ever seen. It is almost as contagious as chickenpox. Chickenpox is so contagious, that if you had a patient sitting in a room with chickenpox, someone walking by in the hallway outside the room, with that door open, could catch it. That's how contagious it was - just breathing the same air from an adjacent room.” (7) Without masks for all students & staff, the infection of an entire student body is not only a possibly, but an inevitability.
Within the last few days, many states and counties have revised their masking policies, choosing to follow the most recent scientific data in an effort to keep the children entrusted to them safe while at school.
You have worked hard to keep our children safe to date. As the numbers on the BPS Dashboard show, masks were effective last year at controlling the spread of Covid. We urge you to re-evaluate your plans for the upcoming school year in light of current guidance and local data. Thank you all for your leadership.
Signed,
The families of BPS students & concerned citizens
References:
(1) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html
(6) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/#__ffn_sectitle
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Petition created on August 7, 2021