Parents send “Cease and desist” letter to school board

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

Attorney Jeff Childers has sent a “Cease and desist” demand letter today to Alachua County School Board Attorney David Delaney on behalf of a group of local parents. The letter asks Alachua County Public Schools (“the District”) to “immediately cease and desist from the enforcement of its unlawful defiance of the Department of Health’s guidances related to quarantine procedures and providing parents with an opt-out of the masking policy at their ‘sole discretion.'”

The letter goes on to say that if the district doesn’t comply with the demands, Childers will “expeditiously file an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus against the District and seek emergency relief.” A Writ of Mandamus is a procedure that can be used when a public official is not acting in accordance with the requirements of the law; in this case, the First District Court of Appeals will be asked to order the school board to comply with the law and with the Florida Department of Health emergency rule governing masks and quarantine.

The letter says that the District’s masking policy “creates sensory issues, anxiety, adverse reactions, social maladjustment, barriers to activities like sports, psychological and obsessive-compulsive disorders, or is just simply a distraction from the primary educational experience.” Childers cites the Florida Constitution, which “provides that a high quality education is a fundamental right available to all citizens of the State of Florida” and writes that the option of applying for a Hope Scholarship “fails to comply with the constitution’s requirement of a ‘free’ high-quality public education.”

The letter cites the Right to Privacy in the Florida Constitution and the First District Court of Appeals’ finding “that mandatory masking is presumptively unconstitutional.” It goes on to describe how the District’s quarantine policy violates state law and then cites Florida Statutes that give a school board the power to supervise the schools within its district, but “it may not exercise this power in a manner ‘expressly prohibited by the State Constitution or general law.'”

The letter gives Delaney and the school board 24 hours to respond “indicating the District’s intention to comply with applicable law as described herein, or we will have no choice but to initiate our emergency petition.” The letter concludes with an admonition to “Govern yourself accordingly.”