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The tug of war between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Biden administration over mask mandates in schools escalated Thursday when the state Board of Education voted unanimously to penalize school districts that continue to require masks, a move the U.S. Department of Education warned could be illegal. The board found that eight districts were not in compliance with a new state law on parental rights and that they violated a recent state health department rule that says students exposed to the coronavirus cannot be ordered to quarantine if they are asymptomatic. (Rozsa and Strauss, 10/7)

San Francisco will loosen its mask mandate for certain indoor spaces on Oct. 15, but in the city and much of the rest of the Bay Area, people will still be required to wear face coverings in most public places for the next couple of months and possibly into 2022, according to new rules announced Thursday. In the eight Bay Area counties with indoor mask mandates, health officers will lift the local orders once they reach low COVID case and hospitalization rates and at least 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated. In lieu of the 80% goal, they can lift the mandates eight weeks after children ages 5 to 11 are eligible for vaccination; based on when federal authorization is expected, the earliest counties could meet that metric would be late December. (Allday, 10/7)

Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he will not force his employees to get vaccinated as required by a mandate the city council passed on Wednesday. "The issue has become so politicized," Villanueva said on Thursday. "There are entire groups of employees that are willing to be fired and laid off rather than get vaccinated, so I don't want to be in a position to lose 5 percent, 10 percent of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate." (Beals, 10/7)

The first state employees to lose a paycheck over a failure to comply with Gov. Ned Lamont’s COVID-19 vaccination-or-test mandate will come from a small pool of probationary employees, sources said Thursday. With compliance rates approaching 98%, the Lamont administration intends to make a measured first step Friday toward enforcing the mandate by suspending non-compliant workers still in their six-month test periods — a step tantamount to dismissal for those workers. (Pazniokas and Pananjady, 10/7)

Oklahoma’s top public education official on Thursday switched her party affiliation to Democratic and announced a bid for governor, blasting Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Joy Hofmeister, a lifelong member of the GOP first elected as state superintendent in 2014, stressed that her values have not changed and that her decision was not an easy one. But she said she was bothered by what she called Stitt’s “toothless health response.” She has previously broken with him over mask policies in schools. (Shammas, 10/7)

Nearly 15% of the students enrolled at Connecticut community colleges have received non-medical exemptions from the system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a rate that administrators suggested could be brought down with efforts to educate students about the vaccine. Of the 37,116 students enrolled at the state’s community colleges this semester, 71% are fully or partially vaccinated; 5,479 or 15% have received non-medical exemptions and 12% have not yet reported their status. Of the 22,698 who are studying on campus, 7,873 (79%) are fully or partially vaccinated, 2,030 (9%) have received non-medical exemptions and 2,423 (10.6%) have not yet reported their status. (Watson, 10/8)

Private school administrator Vic Michaels took notice when six students turned in mask waivers signed by a doctor located more than an hour away from their school. But when another set of families turned in similar waivers all signed by a doctor located hundreds of miles outside of Michigan, Michaels knew there was a broader problem. "When five families at a particular school can get a note from a doctor in Florida — the same doctor in Florida who doesn't tell us what their medical condition is, only that they can't wear a mask — there's a problem with that," said Michaels, an assistant superintendent with the Archdiocese of Detroit who oversees COVID-19 policies for 87 Catholic or private schools in six counties in southeast Michigan. (Boucher, 10/8)

Symptoms of depression and anxiety among U.S. adults fell over the first half of 2021, as Americans received COVID-19 vaccine shots and state lockdowns and other restrictions were lifted. According to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Tuesday, increases and decreases in the frequency of reported symptoms at the state and national levels "mirrored the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases during the same period." (Musto, 10/7)

The union representing American Airlines warned that staffing shortages could start as the holiday travel season begins if employees lose their jobs for refusing to get the COVID vaccine. "What we're looking for is to ensure that there's a pilot in the cockpit," said Dennis Tajer, the spokesman for Allied Pilots Association. "If you suddenly one day have 4,000-plus pilots that are not able to fly, that's a big deal. That's worse than this past summer." But the largest pilots association and most major carriers — United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines — confirm they will follow President Biden's executive order requiring workers to get the shots. (Barnett, 10/7)