Requests classroom notices identifying wireless equipment, operating times and wired alternatives for par…

Comment of the Coalition of Mothers, Rebekah Ricks, President and Co-Founder, Winter Haven, Florida, in Docket HHS-OASH-2026-0397. Our letter is attached. It responds to Questions 9 and 15(a) as numbered in the notice. Florida shows the gap. Florida now generally bars elementary and middle school students from using their own wireless devices during the school day (s. 1006.07(2)(f), Fla. Stat., as amended by Ch. 2025-109, Laws of Fla.). Our state has decided that a child's phone at school is a question of public policy. Yet the district's own wireless access points, which transmit whether or not a child's phone is off, are not addressed. We searched chapters 1001 through 1013 of the Florida Statutes and chapter 6A of the Florida Administrative Code and found no requirement that a district tell parents what wireless equipment operates in their child's classroom. A Florida mother can learn the school's rule on her child's phone. She cannot learn what is installed above her child's desk. Question 9. We ask the Department to recommend a short notice that schools and licensed child care providers post for parents, listing the wireless equipment in each classroom, when it operates, whether a wired option exists, and whom to call with questions. Disclosure makes no health finding. It treats parents as the decision-makers they already are in every other part of school life. Question 15(a). No federal agency publishes the number of transmitters within a defined distance of a school or licensed child care facility, and no federal agency has measured RF levels in an occupied American classroom. We ask the Department to make both a research priority, and to give particular attention to rooms serving the youngest children. We support the fuller comment filed in this docket by Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK), which addresses the remaining questions with primary-source citations. Prepared by Rebekah Ricks. Contact: rricks@thecoalitionofmothers.com.