DUVAL COUNTY, Fla — You have until midnight Monday to put in your two cents about what the next school year should look like in Duval County.
Tap here to take the survey from the Duval County Public Schools website. If you're a student, parent, or employee, they want to hear from you.
The survey asks about masks in school and on the bus, desk shields, temperature checks, the availability of hand sanitizer, and the use of anti-microbial spray treatments on surfaces.
The latest guidance from the CDC states students can sit three feet apart in the classrooms wearing masks but should be six feet apart at lunch, sporting events, and chorus.
CDC guidance no longer includes desk shields. CDC leaders say there's not much evidence they're effective. Before this guidance changed, DCPS used $4 million from a special COVID-19 fund to buy desk shields.
First Coast News asked how much weight the district will give the responses to the survey in their protocol decisions. The communications office only responded stating the survey, CDC recommendations, and input from local health professionals would all go into the decision making.
There may be a variety of answers on the survey.
"With masks it should be an option," said Andrew Nehear, a high school department chair of fine arts. "But I really think parents should get their kids vaccinated if they're gonna be at school every day."
Nehear says many students who are learning virtually are not showing up. He says even in the classroom it doesn't quite feel like one.
"Next year I would really like to see the dividers gone," Nehear said. "Because it makes it feel very enclosed, very cold. It's not really something that gives the kids like, 'okay this is a classroom.'"
Helen De Nardis is a certified substitute teacher who says she'd be more likely to return to substitute teaching if there were more protocols.
"Unless I see that those covid protocols are set in place then I would still maybe wait," she said.
De Nardis also has a son who goes to Atlantic Coast High School.
"Atlantic Coast actually is one of the schools that has so many covid incidences and that scares me," De Nardis said. "So I just hope that next school year we're still gonna be wearing masks, taking temperatures if possible, and maintaining social distance."
Atlantic Coast High School has had 71 COVID-19 cases, DCPS reports.
State laws establish school vaccination requirements. As for when the district will make a decision on the 2021-2022 school year protocols, a district spokesperson says it could take a month.
In St. Johns and Putnam Counties masks will not be required next school year.