ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The Orange County School Board voted Tuesday to make masks optional for the coming school year.

What You Need To Know

  •  The Orange County School Board decided Tuesday that masks would be optional in schools in the fall

  •  The move, though, gave the superintendent the ability to reinstate a mask mandate if the situation called for it

  • Tuesday's decision ended discussion on the policy, which has been debated heavily in recent months

The county's COVID-19 mask policy has been a hotly debated topic in recent months.

Orange County mom Misty Griffin has attended a lot of OCPS School Board meetings recently, including Tuesday's, where she and many other parents asked the board to make masks optional in the fall.

"I'm asking you to please understand and acknowledge that while the masks may help their child, it's hurting mine," she said.

Griffin says her son suffers from severe asthma and the wearing a mask irritates his condition.

Many other parents, like Judi Hayes, say that as long as children under 12 are unable to get a COVID-19 vaccine, the board's decision was premature.

"Until children can get vaccinated, we need to maintain a mask mandate for elementary age children," she said.

Hayes was also worried about the rapidly spreading Delta variant and how it could affect school-aged children.

"I'm concerned about the variant," she said. "I'm concerned about the spikes we're seeing in the summer camps. I'm concerned about it all — it seems like we're not headed in the right direction."

While the pleas of Hayes and other parents ultimately did not sway the outcome, the board did make it possible for the superintendent to make masks mandatory again if the need arises. 

And School Board Chairwoman Teresa Jacobs said she would be open to revisiting the mask policy if the COVID-19 situation deteriorated significantly.

"If  I believe in my heart of hearts that a decision that I've made is putting our children at significant risk, and that they would be safer with masks, then I will be back here advocating for that," she said.

Jacob's stance and the ability of the superintendent to reinstate a mask mandate made Griffin, and parents like her, concerned that the process of making them optional will have been for nothing.

"Again, I think that that needs to be a parent's right to choose," she said.

School Board member Castor Dentel was the only person to vote against making masks optional.

The decision comes a day after health officials reported that the COVID-19 positivity rate in Orange County has jumped in the past two weeks and county Mayor Jerry Demings urged residents to resume wearing face masks indoors in crowded locations. The more contagious delta variant also is on the rise, and COVID-related hospitalizations are increasing, too.

People 12 years old and up are eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, but no vaccine has been approved yet for children under the age of 12.