Though President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have indicated they want children to return to school come fall, others are worried about how it might contribute to the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.

Despite coronavirus cases surging in Florida more than ever before, the state’s education commissioner Richard Corcoran issued an executive order on Monday that mandates public K-12 schools reopen in August for at least five days a week.

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis explained why he has some reservations about the idea of bringing students back to school.

“Going to school, taking kids out of their homes and bringing them into public spaces, it is a concern,” Trantalis said on Yahoo Finance’s The Ticker (video above). “We’re very concerned that it's going to increase the level of the spread, because while the kids may not take on the symptoms, they may bring it home to their parents. So we’re very, very concerned about that.”

Schools ‘may be an opportunity to spread this disease more’

Trantalis said the decision to reopen schools is not made by him, but rather the school board.

“It’s a different level of government,” he said. “It makes its own decisions. But we’re very concerned about bringing kids into schools when, in fact, that may be an opportunity to spread this disease more so than it has been in the past.”

Although most children don’t exhibit symptoms of coronavirus, they can still pass it to members of their household.

Dr. Brian Garibaldi, biocontainment unit medical director at Johns Hopkins University, previously told Yahoo Finance that if the virus follows the same patterns of other respiratory viruses, children will likely become “an important vector for transmission.”

“We need to be mindful, not just of the children’s safety but also teachers and families who are sending children to schools who may have at-risk family members at home or themselves be at higher risk from the disease,” he said.

During a recent congressional hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), stressed that when it comes to reopening schools, “it’s not one size fits all.”

“I think you have to look at it at the local level, the county level, the regional level, the city level, the state level,” he said. “So we often say, ‘In America, should you or should you not be open?’ I mean, that’s almost a non-question because for such a large country, and so heterogeneous, and such a range of involvement of this virus in different parts of the country.”

‘I disagree’ with the CDC guidelines

In a recent speech, President Trump said that he would be putting pressure on governors to open the schools in the fall. He also criticized the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for its reopening guidelines.