The school board of Sarasota County passed a mask mandate to protect student safety, despite Governor Ron DeSantis’ strident opposition to such mandates. When parents learned that they could get a medical exemption form signed by a local chiropractor, they stood in long lines outside his office to get him to sign the form. When the Sarasota board received 1700 requests for medical exemptions, they declined 650 of them. Most of the 650 were signed by chiropractor Dr. Dan Busch. Chiropractors are not medical doctors.
Long lines surrounded Twin Palms Chiropractic late into the evening the day the mandate went into effect. The doctor worked late hours to evaluate and sign medical exemption forms for families all across Sarasota County free of charge.
The next day, district officials announced in an effort to ‘prevent abuse’, the school board would only accept medical exemption forms signed by medical doctors, osteopathic physicians, or advanced registered nurse practitioners. They would no longer accept forms from all licensed healthcare providers, including chiropractors. The change went into effect on the first of September.
“Dr. Busch is disappointed to learn that the Sarasota County School Board has chosen to reject every single medical exemption to the mask mandate signed by Twin Palms Chiropractic, despite those exemptions previously being accepted, and despite the school board continuing to accept exemptions from other licensed chiropractic physicians, dentists, and psychologists who are no longer able to grant exemptions under the new form,” Busch’s attorney sent 8 On Your Side in a September 2 email.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So these parents are more terrified of masks than of Covid-19 or the Delta, Mu variants? This is like an episode from Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” or a Stephen King horror novel.
So the quasi-doctors that believe most medical conditions emanate from the spine give the right wingers a “get out of mask free card.” It’s time to queue up the Rod Serling introduction.
exactly: a perfect plotline for a Twilight” show where the next variant then takes them all out in one fell swoop
Wonder how much the chiropractor got paid for each signature.
If he signed 500 exemptions and got even just $50 for each, that would be $25,000.
Think they will get their money back?
Ha ha ha.
Lots of suckers in Florida.
And lots of sucker fishermen.
Good question!
The ed reform thesis is “nothing we did for the last 30 years benefitted public school students at all, so….. we demand you give us the next 30”:
“Today, by contrast, we’re surrounded by denial on all sides, including today’s version of equity hawks, and we see little or nothing by way of reform zeal or political leadership, save for a handful of reddish states where school choice initiatives continue to flourish. We certainly see nothing akin to the bipartisan commitment to better school outcomes, higher standards, reduced achievement gaps, and results-based accountability that characterized much of the previous forty years.”
The news is very, very grim. All public schools are still failing, say the leaders of the lock step education policy of the last 30 years.
Do they even hear themselves?
What would it take to break free of this echo chamber? You’d need like a Joe Biden in Afghanistan moment, someone to finally, finally go in a different direction.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/blinding-ourselves-americas-achievement-woes
I wonder if all of the people standing in line were members of the unvaccinated, maskless mob of Traitor Trump’s dangerous lunatics.
What might happen to some of them might fit into the meaning of Survival of the Fittest, describing those that survive as the fittest is similar to stating that those that survive survive.
And those that go unvaccinated and do not wear masks have a much higher risk of not surviving COVID, and if they do survive, they might end up suffering with long-covid health problems.
I just don’t understand. This sort of thinking seeps throughout society, sometimes with unforeseen backlashes:
When they found that attendees of the first home game for the Buffal Bills were not wearing masks when indoors at the concession stands/bathrooms, the Erie County Executive determined that if you wanted to watch the bills play at the stadium, you had to get vaccinated. My daughters tailgating group have been going to those games for close to twenty years, yet three or four of them are selling their tickets rather than be forced to get a vaccine. (To be fair, the Bills organization is willing to refund those tickets, but then they would lose their spot – and some of those seats are part of a “legacy”.)
The sacrifices people are willing to make, whether it’s the well being of their family or simply giving up those fun moments which improve their quality of life, confound me. If you are an anti-vaxxer, please let me in on your thought processes.
What these people do does not qualify as “thought.”
Chiropractor: I’m not a doctor, but I pretend to be one for pay.
Years ago, my then wife cajoled me, for months, to go to her quackopractor. Finally, in the interest of marital harmony, I gave in. Here, the conversation I had with this charlatan:
DR. QUACKOPRACTOR: So, are you experiencing any health issues?
ME: No. Not really. Aside from swimmer’s ear. I’m a swimmer. I really need to buy some earplugs.
DR. QUACKOPRACTOR: Well, we can easily take care of that with a spinal manipulation.
ME: You are going to cure swimmer’s ear with a spinal manipulation? It’s a freaking bacterial infection. Usually.
DR. QUACKOPRACTOR: You’ll see. It works.
ME: Uh, no. I won’t see. I think that this session has just ended. Have a nice life.
Funny. I once went to a chiropractor because my back hurt. He told me to lie down on a padded table and relax. He touched my feet once or twice. Several others were in the same room, being “treated.” After 45 minutes, he told me my session was over and charged me $75. I never went back.
I’ve seen some people get help from chiropractors. Then, again, not. And then there’s the wacky stuff I’ve heard about.
Of course, how many professions mix in the ‘quacks’ with the real professionals? The good, the bad, the ugly and then the just plain stupid, delusional or even evil ideas?
I think of teaching.
I remember in 5th grade when this teacher was trying to get our class to speed read. She had this machine that showed reading passages faster and faster and faster. It would leave out words, if I remember it right. This was all way before computers.
I recall thinking, “That machine is ridiculous! What is this teacher thinking?” I just wanted to read a book. At whatever leisurely pace I felt like.
Was there a name for this machine? Other students must’ve been subjected to it across the country.
Where do I begin the list of educational quackery…..common core, APPR, Race to the Top etc…etc…etc…
Then there is the immense political quackery of the age we live in…the BIG LIE.
The Age of Quackery.
I remember this machine you are talking about! I think it was called a Mechanical Reading Pacer.
Bob, I looked up that name…that machine.
Talk about a blast from the past. I have a bomb shelter sign from the early 1960s I got at yard sale and these speed reading machines would fit right in next to it.
I’ll put the link to one of them I found on Ebay at the bottom of this comment.
I’m tempted to buy the thing but my small home is stuffed with, well, old stuff.
(For years I’ve done this thing in class called “What is it Wednesday”. I bring in some old antique or artifact or even something new and students guess what it is..what it was used for. Friends now search out “What is it Wednesday” items for me.)
The speed reading machine me and my fellow 5th graders encountered projected the words on a screen. Like I say, even then I was like, geez, these adults are crazy. What is this going on???
That was also the year all the girls got taken to a special session with their mothers while the boys were left with….I guess the reading machine or a worksheet. (More mysteries of the universe and the adult world.)
That year in school was an absolute hoot and joy. Every 5th grader in our town was bused to a wonderfully decrepit old school that just housed….5th graders. (Someone must’ve had a plan??) I was taught to play trombone in the basement next to the boilers and at recess we started an organization called the International Spy Association (not to be confused with the C.I.A.)
And, I remember taking NOT ONE standardized test ever.
The school was bulldozed years ago and there are now ‘luxury apartments’ on that spot and a Whole Foods next door. Ah, progress…
Thanks for prompting a trip down amnesia lane.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1960s-Mechanical-READING-PACER-Bakelite-Speed-Reading-Trainer-/143345763478?_ul=IN
Remember SRA – oh how I hated reading those boring passages and then having to answer the questions during reading class in junior high. I would much rather have read a good book (or even a trashy novel).
The thing I loved about SRA was the colors of those levels… .
Meanwhile, back in the here and now….
Who woulda thunk THIS is what 2021 would look like, all those years ago….
Isn’t the answer to this obvious?
Every family who had the chiropractor sign an exemption will be obligated to use that “doctor” for all of their family medical needs.
The way to change this is for the medical community to tell patients they will no longer be caring for any families who don’t believe in the medicine they practice.
And no doubt that will mean chiropractors and some of the other anti-mask, anti-vaccine doctors will have a huge boom in patients, and that’s okay. The doctors will be obligated to care for those patients, whether the doctors are chiropractors or gastrointestinal surgeons.
The day is coming, and is now here, when science can conclusively prove that a particular “strain” of infectious disease substance came from a particular individual. And with it comes legal liability, not merely for the individual, but for the sponsoring organization under whose umbrella of authority the offending individual(s) operate. Just wait. The liability lawsuits will be coming shortly.