New rule protecting healthy students from forced quarantining
As 98% of those children who quarantined (last year) never became symptomatic

Staff Reports

Earlier this month a new rule was issued by the Florida Department of Health (DOH), empowering families to decide whether their healthy child should be taken out of school after an exposure to COVID.

Emergency Rule 64DER21-15 prevents the unnecessary exclusion of healthy students from in-person schooling; safeguards the rights of parents and legal guardians and their children; provides health protocols for symptomatic or COVID-19 positive students; and provides opportunities for parents and legal guardians to choose which protocols to implement when their student has had direct contact with someone who tests positive for COVID-19. It is effective as of today, September 22, 2021.

“Parents have the right to have their healthy kids in school,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In-person education is important for a students’ wellbeing, their educational advancement, and their social development. The idea that schools are somehow a big problem when it comes to spread of the virus has been refuted yet again. Not only is the forced quarantining of healthy children disruptive to a student’s education, but many folks in Florida are not able to work from home. With this rule, we are following a symptom-based approach to quarantining students in Florida.”

State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said, “We must make sure that we are doing what is right for parents and for students. There’s not a single high-quality study that shows that any child has ever benefited from forced quarantining policies, but we have seen demonstrable and considerable harm to children. It’s important to respect the rights of parents.”

Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, a father of 6 kids, said they “…missed over 100 days of school last year due to quarantines. If you take the number of kids that had to quarantine, and added up the days they missed in school, in the education arena, we would call that a chronic absenteeism pandemic. Now we have the data telling us that factually 98% of those children who quarantined never became symptomatic. That’s why the previous policy didn’t make any sense. This is a brilliant change, and I’m so thankful for this new common-sense rule.” 

Local educators also attended the event, one of whom is also a parent struggling with the forced quarantining of his own children. Consistent with Florida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, the new DOH rule empowers parents to decide if their healthy child should quarantine. Under the new rule, the only children required to quarantine are those that either test positive for COVID or who are symptomatic.