ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Central Florida’s largest school district is taking action to prevent further spread of the highly infectious delta variant in the classroom by implementing a new mask mandate.

The Orange County School Board approved the mandate — which requires masks for everyone for at least 60 days — during a meeting Tuesday night.

While some parents are all for it, others worry it doesn't do enough to protect kids. 

Sarah Limieux said she's felt stuck between a rock and a hard place, and even with the new mask mandate, she still isn't sure what the right decision is for her immunocompromised daughter.

"The doctors tell you, when you get a heart transplant, the even though your child is immune compromised, the point of it is so they can live," Limieux said. "Being locked up in our house, staying away from the world, unable to make friends at school, unable to learn like her friends learn, is not living."

Limieux is happy about the OCPS decision to require masks, but would like to see other mitigation steps taken as well.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Sajid Chaudhary said schools need to think beyond mask mandates to keep students safe.

"Social distancing, no touching to each other, no hugs, no mixing and keep distance from each other, and hand washing," he said.

Orange County parent Elizabeth Sheagren made the decision to keep her children home from school, but understands that's not an option for a lot of people. 

"I am so grateful that we’re privileged enough that I can stay home with my kids," she said. "I know there’s a lot of parents who can’t do that, so I fear for them." 

Two of Sheagren’s children, Rosie and Vivian, should be starting first and second grade in Orange County Public Schools this year, but with the delta variant infecting thousands of people, including many children across central Florida, she made the tough choice to keep them home.

After the OCPS School Board decision to make masks mandatory without an opt-out option, Sheagren said she and her husband discussed whether it would be safe to send their children in.

“I don’t, unfortunately, have a lot of confidence that this is going to last," Sheagren said. "I fear that after the 60 days, it will just go back to the way it was."

And without the same protection measures in place that OCPS had last year, like social distancing and LaunchEd, she said in-person learning will have to wait.

“The classes can’t be social distanced and I know that the lunch room is still packed with kids," Sheagren said. "So I think it’s a good start but I think there’s still a lot of concerns with safety."

“We are not dealing with the same COVID-19 we were six months ago," said internal medicine specialist Dr. Aftab Khan. "It’s the delta variant, which is highly contagious, highly infectious and a deadly virus. More kids are becoming sicker, they’re in the ICU and being intubated. So we have to be extra cautious,”  

Khan said masks are made to be breathable and are safe for kids and adults to wear for hours.

A recent in-depth study out of China found that the Delta variant carries 1,000-times more viral load, and that both kids and adults can easily spread it when people aren’t masked up.

"Even if I’m vaccinated, I don’t have symptoms, but I can carry 1,000 times more than an equal number of virus in my nasal pharyngeal villosa then similar to the person who is unvaccinated," Khan said. "So I can transmit this virus easily to the person who is unvaccinated. But having a mask can create a big barrier between having an infection and not having an infection."

Sheagren said she’s glad to see OCPS make masks mandatory, even if it’s only for 60 days.  But she and her family have yet to make the call on when she’ll send them back to the classroom.

“With that information, they both chose that, you know, we would love to go back to school but we don’t want to get sick and we don’t want to get other people sick. So we’ll stay home,” Sheagren said. 

This mask mandate starts Monday and will remain in effect until Oct. 30. Medical exemptions can only be made with a note from a doctor or other medical practitioner.