After the Florida Department of Health declined to endorse a Brevard County Schools plan to allow students to sing indoors, the school board decided not to loosen restrictions on singing in class and during extracurricular activities.
Florida Today reports that the school district’s reopening plan allowed many student activities to resume with certain restrictions, but did not permit students to starting singing again indoors because early models showed Covid-19 could be spread by singing, especially in a closed or poorly ventilated room.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests that droplets and airborne particles formed when a person who has COVID-19 coughs, sneezes or sings can travel through the air, spreading the contagion.
But students and parents from Satellite High School’s fine art’s program asked the board last month to reconsider the ban. The board later voted to ask the district to draft guidelines to allow students to sing indoors.
District staff drafted guidelines as requested by the board, but it recommended that the restrictions remain because of the health department's refusal to endorse the policy.
The guidelines would have limited indoor rehearsal time for extracurricular chorus students to 30 minutes, after which the room would be vacated for at least an hour. Students would have to wear masks, have assigned positions in the room to maximize social distancing and ease contact tracing and perform in the largest possible space.
Health department staff had indicated to the district that they might be willing to support allowing indoor singing during the 2021-22 school year.
