Lee School board member moves to eliminate vaccine requirements for students
If a Lee County School Board member’s peers agree, local schools may not only support Florida’s plan to end vaccine mandates for students, but implement such an initiative on its own.
Lee County School Board Member Armor Persons said Tuesday he will bring forward a resolution to remove mandatory vaccines for students within the district.
He said while the state is looking at removing requirements for several vaccines, there are other inoculations mandated in statutes that may not be part of the state effort initially.
“This is parental rights,” Persons said. “A parent should be making that decision if a child should take a vaccine or not.”
He said that the district has on the side of parental rights concerning requiring masks at school during the pandemic, among other issues.
“I think we should stay consistent,” Persons said.
If the resolution passes, Persons said he believes it should be put on the district’s legislative agenda to ask legislators to remove mandatory vaccines period.
Among the reasons he provided was that they do not know whether the vaccines cause autism or not, as 22 years ago it was one in 150 children diagnosed with autism. Now it is one in 31.
“Something is going on. Until we know, people should be more cautious than they are now,” Persons said. “I am sure there will be some people against it, and some people for it.”
Ron DeSantis announced last Wednesday that he has ordered the Florida Surgeon General to end all mandates of vaccines for schoolchildren to attend public schools.
Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said he would be acting with the Florida Department of Health to begin ending mandates for the vaccines that the department controls under Florida law, and that approval from the Florida legislature would be needed for the rest.
The moves announced by DeSantis and Ladapo would seek to end vaccine mandates for school children for a whole host of diseases and infections from polio to chickenpox, smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus and hepatitis.
Ladapo said he would work with the Florida Department of Health and DeSantis to ultimately end all vaccine mandates in Florida.
“All of them, every last one of them,” Ladapo said.
— Nathan Mayberg contributed to this report.