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Appearing at a town hall meeting in Orlando on Thursday, April 29, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he would sign the Fairness in Women's Sports Act.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — After a series of Florida school districts violated Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order banning schools from mandating masks for school-children, he is pushing back.

A statement released by the Republican governor’s office suggested that the paychecks of defiant admins may be frozen if they force children to mask up for the 2021-2022 school year in spite of DeSantis’ executive order explicitly banning the mandates.

As reported by the Daily Wire, authority rests with the State Board of Education “to withhold the paychecks of any school administrators that choose to buck DeSantis’ order against school mask mandates.”

The report notes that stalling paychecks to administrators and school board members might just be a first step. If districts fail to comply with the directive giving parents the exclusive authority to decide whether their children will wear masks, DeSantis’ office could impose “harsher financial penalties,” including “stripping entire districts of state funding.”

A statement released by the governor’s office to CBS Miami describes DeSantis’ priorities as: “protecting parents’ rights” as well as “ensuring that every student has access to a high-quality education that meets their unique needs.”

According to the statement, “With respect to enforcing any financial consequences for noncompliance of state law regarding these rules and ultimately the rights of parents to make decisions about their children’s education and health care decisions, it would be the goal of the State Board of Education to narrowly tailor any financial consequences to the offense committed.”

“For example,” the statement continued, “the State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law.”

The governor’s office went on to observe that “[e]ducation funding is intended to benefit students first and foremost, not systems.”

On August 12, the Miami Herald published a story claiming that DeSantis had “softened” on the issue because the governor lacks direct control over educator pay, quoting the governor’s press secretary Christian Pushaw as saying, “[t]hose officials should own their decision — and that means owning the consequences of their decisions rather than demanding students, teachers, and school staff to foot the bill for their potential grandstanding.”

The next day, Pushaw took to Twitter to blast the Herald and other outlets for “absolutely fake news,” declaring that the governor’s position has not changed and explaining that “withhold[ing] state funding in the exact amount of those officials’ salaries” was always the mechanism by which the penalty would be implemented.

Speaking in Surfside, Florida on Tuesday morning, where he handed out $1,000 bonuses to first responders who helped rescue victims of the condominium collapse in June, Gov. DeSantis said school-wide masking “is something that intimately affects the health and well-being of young kids.”

“We’ve had a whole year to watch how this has developed in Florida, in the United States, and throughout the world. I can tell you in Florida, we had school districts that mandated it last year, others that didn’t, same with private and charter (schools), and there was no statistical difference,” the governor said, adding that “it’s not natural” to require children “to sit there for eight hours” wearing a mask.

Author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza shared an article reporting the governor’s aggressive suggestion to withhold funding from defiant school administrators on Twitter, remarking that “DeSantis isn’t being pushed around.”

The controversial executive order signed by Gov. DeSantis late last month directed the Florida Department of Health, along with the Florida Department of Education, to devise new rules to explicitly “protect parents’ freedom to choose whether their children wear masks,” according to a news release issued July 30 by the governor’s office.

According to the release, the directive is “in response to several Florida school boards considering or implementing mask mandates in their schools after the Biden Administration issued unscientific and inconsistent recommendations that school-aged children wear masks.”

One of the first significant challenges to the governor’s executive order may come from the Broward County School Board, which initially mandated facial coverings but reversed course after DeSantis’ July 30 executive order banning mask mandates for children.

Now, however, Broward has announced it will keep its mandate, and will file legal action to challenge the state’s ban on forcing children to wear masks.

As reported by CBS Miami, parents and children gathered at the school board meeting to express their views on the matter on August 10 prior to the school board’s decision, with some in favor of bucking the governor’s orders and some speaking out in opposition to mask mandates for kids.

One parent accused Gov. DeSantis of being a “bully” for his order leaving the decision about masking up to parents.

“I’m just asking you to please, as a mother, a special needs mother, please just do what you know in your heart is right. Don’t let this man bully you,” she said.

However another parent argued against the mandates, expressing concern that forcing children to wear masks for extended periods is unhealthy.

“I don’t feel comfortable with my son having to go into school and having to wear a mask the entire day, five days a week. I don’t think that’s very healthy for children to do that,” the parent said, adding that “bacteria collects in the mask and the children breathe that back in. That’s not a healthy thing to do.”

It remains to be seen whether DeSantis will be successful in fighting against school administrators and districts that defy his executive order.

During a press briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the Biden administration was looking at sending federal funds to Florida schools if DeSantis cuts off their state funding.

As reported by the New York Post, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona sent a letter to Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran saying school districts have “sole and complete discretion” use federal funds to pay the salaries of education officials whose pay is cut by the governor, and promising that if the Florida Department of Education “does not wish to pursue such an approach, the Department will continue to work directly with the school districts and educators that serve Florida’s students.”

The move would be a continued escalation in what has been a heated rhetorical battle between DeSantis and President Joe Biden over COVID-19 policy.

After President Biden told the Florida governor to “get out of the way” on COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, DeSantis hit back, saying “if you’re coming after the rights of parents in Florida, I’m standing in your way, I’m not going to let you get away with it. If you’re trying to deny kids a proper in-person education, I’m going to stand in your way, and I’m going to stand up for the kids in Florida.”

Asked by reporters to reply to Gov. DeSantis’ comments, President Biden attempted to parry, responding, “Governor who?”

DeSantis was not long in reacting to the president’s remark, joking, “I guess I’m not surprised that Biden doesn’t remember me. I guess the question is, what else has he forgotten?”

LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.

References

References
1 (Jason Rantz