Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will issue an executive order to prohibit school districts from imposing mask-wearing requirements as students return to classes in August.

Scoffing at revised COVID-19 guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DeSantis questioned potential health effects of forcing students to wear masks for hours at a time and said parents should be allowed to decide whether their children use face coverings.

"If you have been listening to some of the murmurs going around, particularly in Washington lately, if you listen to some of the stuff that's being percolated around the CDC, there's a movement to try to impose more restrictions on the American people," DeSantis said during an event at Two Meatballs in the Kitchen restaurant in Cape Coral. "And I just want to say in Florida, there will be no lockdowns. There will be no school closures. No mandates in the state of Florida."

The Broward County School Board on Wednesday decided students would be required to wear masks when they return to class, but most districts across the state aren't expected to make similar decisions.

On Tuesday, the CDC recommended that teachers, students and school staff members wear masks, as Florida and other states are seeing major increases in COVID-19 because of the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus. The federal government has not mandated masks in schools.

The Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics on Thursday called for the "universal" use of masks in schools. Meanwhile, the state's largest teachers union issued a statement Friday that supported local decision-making on health and safety issues.

"In a state as large and diverse as Florida, decisions on health and safety will not come in one-size-fits-all solutions, and that is why it is important for the will of the people, as expressed by their locally elected officials, to determine decisions regarding health and safety in schools," the Florida Education Association said in a statement. "Unfortunately, through his words and actions, Gov. DeSantis has made clear he does not respect the freedom of locally elected officials to do what they feel is best for their communities."

Similarly, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, who is seeking to unseat DeSantis in 2022, said local officials should have a say in mask decisions.

"The decisions about whether children should wear masks into school, or if you can have some virtual education, ought to be made on a local basis. Not necessarily Tallahassee down, but rather local districts up," Crist, a congressman from St. Petersburg, told The News Service of Florida. "They know what their situation is, better than anybody."

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, also running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, held a midday news conference at the Capitol and accused DeSantis of "pandering to that electorate that is anti-mask and anti-vax."

"We need to be listening to scientists and to our medical doctors, not our politicians pandering to this pandemic," Fried said.