Leon County School Board Approves $50K to Challenge Parental Opt-Out Requirement

Leon County School Board Approves $50K to Challenge Parental Opt-Out Requirement

At a special meeting today, the Leon County School Board voted 5-0 to approve Superintendent Rocky Hanna’s request for $50,000 to hire outside counsel to challenge the State’s requirements that parents be given the ability to opt-out their children from mask mandates.

On July 30, 2021, Governor DeSantis issued Executive Order 21-175, which directed the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Education to immediately adopt rules designed to make sure that any COVID-related safety protocols established in schools do not, among other things, violate a parents’ right under Florida law to make health care decisions for their minor children, citing the Parent’s Bill of Rights (HB 21), which was signed into law on June 29, 2021 (Ch. 2021-199, Laws of Florida). 

On August 8, 2021, the Florida Department of Health adopted emergency rule 64DER21-12, which requires schools to allow parents to opt minor children out of any mask mandate that is imposed.

On August 23, 2021, based on a review of District specific data showing high positivity rates among students for the preceding two-week period, the Superintendent issued a district wide mask mandate for students in pk-8 with a medical only opt out.

On Friday, August 27, 2021, the Superintendent and Board Chair received a notice of noncompliance from Commissioner Corcoran.  The Superintendent and the District’s General Counsel contacted the Weiss Serota law firm to discuss the pursuit of legal avenues which would affirm the School Board’s authority under the Florida Constitution and Florida Statutes to institute temporary mask requirements during a public health emergency. This law firm currently represents at least one other school district in Florida on the same fundamental issue.

35 Responses to "Leon County School Board Approves $50K to Challenge Parental Opt-Out Requirement"

  1. @ Danny… neither face diapers nor two shots of sugar water and fertilizer runoff can prevent anyone from catching the China Bio-Weapon Flu.

    … on THIS… the Science is Settled

    And Hope is 100% spot-on… what is causing the latest uptick in cases (not deaths mind you), is the treasonous “Invade, Poison, and Destroy America Policy” instituted by the Dementia Joe Biden Sadministration and his DemoKKKrat Party.

    … start dealing with reality sport… you’ll thank me later

  2. @ Dan…

    I explained to you previously that anything you say without prefacing Biden’s dereliction of Duty by not securing the Border is disingenuous.

    If you think that’s funny then you need to recalibrate your Humanity meter.

    The only thing you have managed to convey is that you are a co-conspirator to war crimes against your own people. How sad for you, how sad for us.

    May God have mercy on your soul…

  3. @ Dan…

    Your failure to express your concerns that Biden has not secured the borders under normal circumstances and especially during a pandemic makes anything else you submit laughable. It also makes you a co-conspirator when good men say nothing.

    Failure to close the borders is dereliction of Duty and during a pandemic it should be considered a war crime. Biden should be impeached, arrested, and brought up on charges for a war crime. He is purposefully not protecting us by Design for political gain. And during a pandemic it’s a war crime.

    May God have mercy on your soul.

  4. @ Doug,

    The school board is behind the mask and none of them have a medical degree.

    With the vaccines and masks there is efficacy to be considered so please don’t insult me or anyone else who wants the higher standard and not a dirty rag over my child’s mouth.

    Your theory is in direct conflict with the way professionals handled treatments in dealing with polio victims prior to the polio vaccine. Sanitation was of the utmost importance especially for children.

    Placing a dirty rag with a no efficacy and no control measures for sanitation solely on the whims of non-professional medical individuals is an assault and an affront to the safety and welfare of our children. It is practicing medicine without a license.

    I believe the Department of Health is not mandating masks.

    All treatments for polio patients were by medical professionals of the most professional and experienced.

    A very close relative was under the employ of Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955 when it was discovered that the polio vaccine worked. It was one of his greatest honors in his lifetime to be associated with Dr. Salk.

    Dr. Salk would weep today if he knew that school board members were advocating and mandating that filthy rags be placed over our children’s faces with no medical professional prescribing such. The heavens seem to be weeping, literally.

    May God have mercy on your soul…

  5. @ Dougy… For children and young adults from 0 to 19 years of age = 99.9973% recovery rate. It’s called “science”… put down the bong and back away from CNN and Twidiot… slowly.

    … you’ll thank me later

    “MY BODY; MY CHOICE”… it’s not just for killing innocent babies anymore

  6. N95 or kn95 mask are recommended for use by the medical community.no one has ever claimed they are perfect or they will completely stop the virus.but like anyone going into harms way like combat,fire fighting,or any dangerous situation, there are many components to equipment that will help prevent injuries. What you anti-mask anti- vaccine morons don’t seem to under stand. This is only a temporary requirement. Is this such a great sacrifice? Is some misguided libertarian selfish principle more important than trying to keep children out of our hospitals which as of today the refrigerated morgue trucks are now in Tallahassee. How about considering the sacrifice of our medical community that every day,every hour is dealing with this crisis. Our school board is doing exactly what any responsible elected body should be doing. Proctecing your children. This is what happens when we neglect teaching the importance of history in our schools the story of small pox, and polio would be a good start.

  7. Really, Rocky is at it again! Can’t the people of this county see he is looking at a higher democratic office? Maybe one of his old students will come forward tell everyone what he was like as a “mentor” I wouldn’t trust him as dog catcher.

  8. We are very lucky to have Gov Desantis. Unfortunately the local govt. in Tallahassee does everything they can – with tax-payer money of course – to subvert all of the governor’s common sense guidance.

  9. Dear Commenter Doug,
    When it comes to masks, you will continue to look like a ding dong till you realize all masks and respirators are not created equal, and zero “masks” meet fit, leakage, and efficacy standards, where
    3.2% leakage equates to 100% inefficacy, and will always fail to meet the CDC requirement of 90%+ efficacy to be considered mitigating.

    Most importantly, you’ve been convinced to wear these because no one wanted to talk about respirator supply chain issues and telling people they were to protect others (which there are no standards of use for) helped to circumvent OSHA in a major way. For photos and a thorough breakdown on respiratory aerosol emissions, MID, aerosol behavior, and differing forms of PPE exhale plumes, please see: https://rationalground.com/masks-are-not-source-control/

  10. Now, they have a new issue. They have stepped outside of qualified immunity, while in direct violation of multiple statutes and federal education laws; this puts them as responsible for their own legal defenses, as qualified immunity only applies when following law as it is written. Important to note: not solely breaking EO. 1003.573 on Prohibited Restraint is a huge one. So they have now chosen to misappropriate and what appears to me to be the supplanting of funds to cover fees for which they will be personally liable. So if the FLDOE decides to pull their salaries, they would be personally liable for legal fees while receiving no income.

    We’ve sadly gotten to the point where no one wants to discuss what we should be doing instead. We’re just flip-flopping back and forth all over the place, while the board responsibility is to accommodate all voices. https://rationalground.com/goldilocks/
    This is my rebuttal to the EO ruling, including specifically which education laws and statutes were overlooked in the ruling.

  11. @Georgia 20; We’re thrilled you are gone too. Staying in a job and living in a town that makes you miserable for 21 years is just stupid. I can see how it might make you bitter.

    Try to cheer up.

  12. Do the surgeons go into the operating room wearing a homemade mask non-medical grade, and don’t know what they’re made of, possibly never been washed, not even washed daily, reused etc…? The surgeon would lose his medical license for endangering the life of a patient, the people around him, and himself/herself.

    You put a non-approved mask on my child’s face and I will report you for child abuse and practicing medicine without a license. Many of us are smarter than political operatives pretending to protect our children. We as a parent have the god-given right to protect our children from people like you.

    Thank you Governor DeSantis for protecting our children and our rights.

    Best Governor in America!

  13. From and employee of LCS this is an outrage. You would prefer to pay out $50K vs. Sending everyone home. Wearing a mask is helpful but when you have small spaces and kids and staff aren’t 6 nor 3 feet apart what’s the point. I have been exposed to covid 3 time just this school term and not once have the administration team notified me. Yet if schools were closed the numbers would not be as high and we would not be wasting $50.

  14. Funny how these Leftist Branch Covidian Cultists of Covidstan like to Reeeee about us being anti-mask and then provide zero actual peer reviewed evidence that their holy Chicom supplied face diapers provides any benefits whatsoever. If you filthy, excrement re-breathing Cultists wish to muzzle your vile faces have at it. No one is stopping you. I encourage it, so we don’t see your despicable faces. The line is drawn when you push your sociopathic, mentally ill, cultist beliefs on children to abuse them. You Cultists want to be governed harder. You beg for it. I recommend you lot move to Australia or New Zealand. Your filth seems to have taken strong root over there. Seems the dark forces of Mordor have taken Middle Earth down under.

  15. I think a bigger public (mental) health issue is the TDS that many alt-left lemmings (like Doug) suffer from. TDS is said to block ones ability for rational thought, induce a projection mentality, and eliminate ones recognition of their own hypocrisy. For example… They tend to ignore reality, and prefer the illusion of perception. They often accuse others of their own nefarious actions. They also lament “science” yet deny the settled science of life and gender. One of their toughest intellectual challenges is their inability to reconcile their hypocritical cry of “My Body; My Choice”. One of the more rigorous dilemmas comes when they find themselves alone in their bathroom of choice, conflicted with the decision to wipe or not, for their is no one their to tell them it’s ok.

    Recall the All… and Defund the Public Indoctrination System

  16. The anti mask cult people base their science from the research done at the world renowned trump university funded by donations from the trump foundation with the lead scientist dr. D.j. Trump. Remember the real virus is the stupidity virus escaped from the trump laboratory. The infected people need to be quarantined on the planet Uranus. And governor deathsantis can be their leader.

  17. David B, We Thank God every single minute of every single day we got out of there in 2015. Living in Tallahassee ( due to a job) was my 21 year prison sentence. It was horrible in 1994, and worse when we left in 2015. Thrilled to be gone!

  18. When I read this story there were 12 comments. Most of them consist of the same name calling that comes every time. The least you could do is come up with something new. It’s a mask not an attack.

  19. Governor and Commissioner,
    As an elected official Rocky Hanna can and should be immediately SUSPENDED for the following:
    1.Not following his oath of office pertaining to enforcement of laws and statues
    2.Admitting he purposely falsified information to federal authorities creating an investigation costing taxpayers over $400,000 all the while knowing he provided purposely false information
    3. Breaking the Educator Code if Ethics by dating a teacher he supervised and evaluated.

    Suspend and investigate Mr. Hanna.

  20. So, we’re using taxpayer money to fight taxpayers? Don’t teachers and everyone associated with LCS actually work for the parents? How about the five board members foot the bill themselves!

  21. “Hope their constituents understand they don’t agree with the parent opt outs. No sane person does. Sane people want the kids in school and will do what it takes to meet that objective, including requiring masks, and spending money.”

    Glad to hear from the “sane” Branch Covidian Cultists of Covidstan who are invincibly ignorant and keep voting for their leftist scruel Kommissars to rule over them, indoctrinate their offspring, abuse their children and force them to rebreathe their own bacterial, viral excrement. Well said “sane” cultist.

    As for the Scruel Kommissars, the 5-0 vote was no surprise. No matter what two of the members pretend to be, they will always be Leftist Branch Covidian Cultists of Covidstan, forever invincibly ignorant and so will the majority of Kool-Aid drinking cultist voters of the Kapital District.

  22. I hope some one at TR will remember to check campaign contributions from the Weiss-Serota law firm, as well as the husbands, wives and adult children of the attorneys at the frim to see how much of the $50K was laundered back as a campaign contribution to Hanna and the Board members.

  23. “We’ll show that evil ogre Governor, we’ll give $50,000.00 to a lawyer! And if they need more, our tax payers will pay more.”

    Never mind that 51% of Leon County students can’t read and do arithmetic at a satisfactory level…

  24. Willy-Nilly strap an unscientific unapproved piece of cloth around our children’s faces, not knowing what it will do to their lungs… in the present and the future. Anyone wants to put anything on my child’s face it better come from a doctor, backed-up by scientific research, proven and licensed to be safe. And the superintendent can purchase approved masks from the FDA and distribute them with the money coming out of his pay.

    Anything less is an assault to a child, misusing your position, and practicing medicine without a license.

  25. LCSB is not going to get much from the law firm other than a symbolic fight. But thats OK Rocky will have around 1/2 of the $50,000.00 secretly deposited into his HAA HAA account.
    Hey here’s a thought maybe the Governor could have The FDLE look into the payment and possable reimbursement of a substantial amount into Rocky’s HAA HAA account.
    No need to involve the partisan FBI in this after the disgraceful way those leftists handled the Maddox corruption trial. Governor we need some help here. Please.

  26. Wait. Where’s the normal vitriol directed at the “3”????
    We have ALL 5 agreeing to this expenditure, just like they insinuated from the beginning. They don’t oppose masks, they oppose breaking laws. At the end of rasmussen’s and striplin’s spiels, they always say seek recourse in the court. No surprise here. Hope their constituents understand they don’t agree with the parent opt outs. No sane person does. Sane people want the kids in school and will do what it takes to meet that objective, including requiring masks, and spending money.

  27. Is that a legal use of those funds?

    So, this is their response to Commissioner Corcoran withholding the pay checks of the school boards in Alachua and Broward Counties. It proves their primary focus is not the welfare of the children; their primary focus is about protecting their jobs.

    How come they didn’t have a special meeting when they found out that half the students in their crummy public schools can not read or write at grade level?

    Vote them all out. The children, parents, tax payers, and all Leon County citizens deserve better.

    Governor DeSantis, please, help us!

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