ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Come Monday, fewer students in Orange County schools could sport the face masks after a big change for the district.

Starting Monday, masks will no longer be required for students in Orange County Public Schools' buildings and buses.

The district will move to a face-covering policy that permits parents to opt their children out of wearing a mask as of Nov. 1, Superintendent Dr. Barbara Jenkins announced Thursday.

Under the revised policy, employees, visitors and volunteers will still be required to wear a face mask until further notice. Jenkins said she thinks face masks could be made optional for employees and other adults after Dec. 3 or sooner, based on COVID data. 

A message posted on the OCPS website said, “The district hopes parents will seriously consider the opportunity, when available, to vaccinate their children in consultation with their medical providers.”

Many parents in Orange County said they were not surprised by the decision to let a policy requiring a physician’s opt-out to expire Oct. 30, after the county lifted its COVID-19 state of emergency Wednesday and the state of Florida filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration's COVID mandates. But they had been hopeful the mandate would have stayed intact just a little while longer.​

“Well I’m not surprised to be honest," Avery Dawkins said after listening to a phoned message from the county announcing Jenkins' decision. "I am really disappointed.”

The timing she feels, is all wrong for her son Dylan, who is 5 years old and enrolled in kindergarten.

"Mostly because we are on the cusp of a vaccine being approved for kids that are 5 to 11," Dawkins said. "Why take the mandate away now before they are able to get protected?”

The superintendent is encouraging parents to get their kids vaccinated.

But a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey found only about a third of parents with 5 to 11 year olds would get their child vaccinated immediately upon federal approval of the vaccine.

Despite the district changing its stance on masks for students, Dawkins is not.

“The fact is, kids are wearing masks, and that's why numbers are going down," Dawkins said. "If you take that protection away now, the numbers will go up.”

Her son said he enjoys wearing his space-themed mask and has no problem wearing it all day in class. "I want to stay safe," he told his mother.

He also said he has no problem hearing other children in class because they just talk extra loud while wearing their masks.

No one from’s Dylan class has tested positive for COVID-19 this year, according to his mother, and his class has not had to quarantine this year. Avery credits masks for doing their part.

“Ideally, I don’t want him to wear a mask, I get that," Dawkins said. "I get the concern, but I just think you have to weigh the risks, and I just think the psychological effects are far less than getting COVID.”

On Monday, when Dylan goes back to school, he’ll do it with a mask on, and his mother said she hopes the rest of his class will, too.​

The switch drew a quick, strident response from Mask Up OCPS, a group of parents who advocated continuing the mandate as it had been. In a statement, the group said members are "devastated and angry." 

Mask Up, in its statement, said, "We understand the community COVID numbers as a whole look great at the moment but we are disappointed that Superintendent Jenkins and the Board failed to acknowledge the special environment they have created for our kids. The parents of Orange County and their Medical Advisory Committee were encouraging them to keep our kids in the safe bubble of universal masking until they too had the opportunity to begin to reach 70%-plus vaccinated."

"Dec. 3 or earlier for optional adult masking may seem fair to a population of 70% or more (some of which have boosted immunity), but it is not fair to our children who aren't even promised the opportunity to receive both initial doses of the vaccine by that date," the statement continued. "Our children have a right to be fully vaccinated before a teacher takes their mask off in their classrooms."

Jenkins said she made the decision after speaking with Orange County school board members and local medical advisers, noting substantially fewer COVID-19 cases and positivity rates and that Mayor Jerry Demings ended Orange County’s COVID state of emergency on Wednesday.

Jen Cousins, a mother of four children in district schools who appeared before the board earlier this week with the Mask Up group, said the district's decision makes her worried her kids could get sick with COVID-19 just from going to school.

'My kids will continue masking, even after they get vaccinated,' Jen Cousins, a mother who has 4 children in Orange County Public Schools, said after the district announced that it was switching its mask policy to a parental opt-out. (Spectrum News)

​​“I’m going to be 100 percent more worried, absolutely without a doubt," Cousins said. "My kids will continue masking, even after they get vaccinated. They will continue masking throughout the end of the actual school year next year just out of an abundance of caution. We’ve come this far, we’ve worked this hard to get this pandemic under control, I don’t understand why we would stop now. It makes no sense at all.” 

With her two youngest not yet eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Cousins said she feels like the move by OCPS is effectively eliminating the protection her children and others currently have from getting sick in the classroom. 

In its statement released Thursday soon after the announcement was made, Mask Up OCPS contended that the change only benefits a small group of of students whose parents are taking a politically motivated stand. 

"Meanwhile, thousands of students whose parents can’t keep them home, or have special educational needs that prevent them from being in school, will continue to suffer as a result of this decision," the Mask Up statement said.

"The leaders of OCPS have proven that they care more about politics and threats than the safety of our kids, and we are beyond disgusted."

The message posted on the OCPS website said, “The district hopes parents will seriously consider the opportunity, when available, to vaccinate their children in consultation with their medical providers.”

The disparate stands on a public health issue reflect a politically charged atmosphere that has surrounded the issue of COVID overall and mask mandates in public schools throughout the state. Opponents and proponents of mask mandates have flooded school board meetings in Central Florida to hotly debate the topic, and at least one Brevard County school board member has said she and her family have been harassed and threatened because she supports continuing the mandate.

Orange County remained one of the few school districts in Florida that had maintained its mandate with a physician's opt-out after Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladipo, a day after being appointed to the position by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, issued an order indicating that wearing a mask is the "parent or legal guardian's sole discretion" and that made quarantining students exposed to COVID-19 optional for asymptomatic students.

Ladipo's order came well after DeSantis had issued an executive order banning mask mandates and threatening to withhold funds from school districts with mask mandates equivalent to the salaries of school board members and school superintendents. That order has been tied up in the courts. The Florida Department of Education followed up on that order by informing at least two counties in Florida that it would withhold those funds. It then sent letters to Orange, Hillsborough, Sarasota and Brevard counties that it was investigating whether to withhold funds from those districts, too.

DeSantis also has called for a special session of the Florida Legislature next month to pass measures to ban COVID-19-related mandates.

Orange County originally implemented its mask mandate with a physician's opt-out because of concerns about the health and safety of students and staff when the area reported high COVID-19 case counts and double-digit positivity rates. The policy was adopted at least partly based on recommendations from a local medical advisory panel.

Reporter Ashleigh Mills contributed to this story.