Gov. DeSantis announces reopening of Florida schools

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis says all 67 school districts in Florida are now open for in-person learning. During a midday news conference in Jacksonville, DeSantis said school closures should be taken off the table from now on.

DeSantis credited charter and private schools for putting students and families first by opening in-person learning immediately.

“So I think that a lot of our charters really led the way, a lot of the private schools, because they did not have to deal with the political opposition from the union," DeSantis said.

He went on to speak about the lawsuits presented by the teacher unions throughout the state of Florida, calling them “bogus claims.” He said that these lawsuits were to keep schools out of schools and when Florida has districts where parents couldn’t do virtual learning, that was wrong.

The Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran, said that reopening school in Florida has been “an absolute, overwhelming success to date.”

“We are not the guinea pigs. We are the smart ones who looked at what was going on around the world. Whether it was Asia, Scandinavia, Europe, we looked at all that data and what became very clear to the Governor early on, to the point that he called us in July, was that we got to open up our schools," Corcoran said.

Locally, two schools in Duval County have switched to being fully virtual due to a surge of COVID-19 cases. Fletcher High School will be closed through October 28 and Douglas Anderson School of the Arts will be closed through tomorrow.

While the Governor was not aware about the closures, he said that schools generally should not be quarantining healthy students. He did say that it was up to the districts to make the decision to close schools, not the state.

“It’s not our decision to close schools but we are not going to recommend school closures,” DeSantis said.

Cox Media Group