A Florida judge ruled that school districts can decide to delay the start of their school year without suffering funding losses in a blow to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s drive to reopen schools.
Leon County Judge Charles Dodson sided with the Florida Education Association in the teachers union’s lawsuit against the state. The Florida Education Association sued the state to allow individual school districts to decide to postpone the start of the school year if they feel it is unsafe to open because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“An injunction in this case will allow local school boards to make safety determinations for the reopening of schools without financial penalty,” he wrote. “This is what the local school boards were elected to do.”
Dodson agreed that the Florida Department of Education was violating the state constitution by prohibiting school districts from self-governing. He said that pulling funding from schools that did not reopen as scheduled left them unable to function.
“The districts have no meaningful alternative,” Dodson wrote. “If an individual school district chooses safety, that is, delaying the start of schools until it individually determines it is safe to do so for its county, it risks losing state funding, even though every student is being taught.”
Dodson said state officials “essentially ignored the requirement of school safety” by mandating that they reopen in August.
“They had no real choice. Defendants arbitrarily prioritized reopening schools statewide in August over safety and the advice of health experts; and all school districts complied in order to avoid a drastic loss of State funding,” he wrote.
Dodson’s order might be short-lived, however. The state is expected to appeal the decision, which could temporarily overturn the judge’s order, allowing schools to postpone their reopening while the appeal is heard by the court.
