Florida Governor DeSantis backs off threat to slash school officials' salaries

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday backed off his threat to slash school officials’ salaries should they impose mask mandates in defiance of his executive order.

DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told The Miami Herald in an email that “activist, anti-science school board members” should dock their own salaries if the state imposes financial sanctions on their districts. ...

The backtracking comes days after DeSantis’s office threatened to withhold the salaries of the officials, suggesting that the State Board of Education could “move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law.”

But despite his threat, several school districts in the state have decided to keep their mask mandates in place, risking the financial retribution that comes along with the decision....

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