A school district in Sarasota County, Florida, has tightened its mask policy after a chiropractor signed hundreds of medical exemption forms that allowed students to opt out of
wearing masks in schools, officials said.
The Sarasota County School Board had voted in August to implement a 90-day mandatory mask policy for students, employees, visitors and vendors, with
exceptions for medical reasons or if wearing a face mask would not be consistent with a student's Individualized Education Plan
The decision was due in part to a chiropractor who signed hundreds of medical forms exempting students from the mask mandate, a district official told CNN. Chiropractors are not medical doctors.
The school district has rejected about 650 medical exemption forms, the "majority" of which were signed by Dan Busch, a chiropractor at Twin Palms Chiropractic in Venice, it said.
Busch has defended signing the forms, he told CNN affiliate WWSB.
"Every evaluation that I performed was very specific, and I performed them in my scope of practice," Busch said last month. "I had to stay very specific to the diagnoses that were in my wheelhouse; there are plenty that weren't."
Busch's lawyer on Tuesday told CNN Busch had no comment.
Asked a day later by CNN about the exemption forms and whether he had examined every child for whom he signed one, Busch said, "This wasn't about me. This is about parents' freedom."
CNN later reached out to Busch's lawyer who said Busch had no comment.
www.google.com
www.cnn.com
www.businessinsider.com
