A Florida school district has altered its mask policy after officials learned a local chiropractor had signed hundreds of medical exemption forms to excuse students from wearing masks.
- The Sarasota County School District, which in August approved a mask mandate that permitted students with medical exemptions to opt out, has revised the policy to allow exemptions only for students with forms signed by certified medical doctors, says Superintendent Brennan Asplen. Chiropractors are not certified medical doctors, he notes.
- The move comes after district officials realized more than 650 exemption forms they received were signed by Venice chiropractor Dan Busch. Despite the large number of exemptions he signed, Busch claims each and every one was valid. "Every evaluation that I performed was very specific, and I performed them in my scope of practice," Busch says. "I had to stay very specific to the diagnoses that were in my wheelhouse; there are plenty that weren't."
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