The President’s demands for schools to reopen this fall are part of his reelection strategy

Opening schools is certainly a welcome goal for working parents. Texas, another hot spot whose governor is a key Trump ally, announced later on Tuesday that it would offer all parents the option of remote learning — and would require masks in schools.

The Florida order — which calls for all schools to open brick-and-mortar facilities five days a week for all students and for districts to submit detailed reopening plans — is full of caveats and exceptions.

A careful reading

a. All schools open. Upon reopening in August, all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students, subject to advice and orders of the Florida Department of Health, local departments of health, Executive Order 20-149 and subsequent executive orders. Absent these directives, the day-to-day decision to open or close a school must always rest locally with the board or executive most closely associated with a school, the superintendent or school board in the case of a district-run school, the charter governing board in the case of a public charter school or the private school principal, director or governing board in the case of a nonpublic school.

That sure makes it sound like all schools in Florida aren’t necessarily going to be open in the fall.

“It is up to each individual school district how it reopens in the fall and we will submit a plan to FLDOE. We will continue to follow the advice of our public health and medical experts as to how and when it is safe for our @browardschools community to return to school.”

Sounds like a definite “maybe.”

Now listen to Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who appeared on CNN on Tuesday to talk about the order and the need for districts to have flexibility.

He said he could comply with the order to open schools while not actually bringing kids to school every day:

“We have innovative models, models where students do not need to come to school for education,” Carvalho said. “In the last quarter we demonstrated how effective they can be, continuous remote education without necessarily forcing all students into the same building at the same time.”

He said their internal surveys suggests 30% of parents might actually choose remote learning in the current environment.

That doesn’t sound too far off many of the plans other school districts in other states have been considering.

Later, Carvalho said definitively that the current situation must change before kids return to class. “I will not reopen our school system August 24th if the conditions are what they are today,” he said.

Despite the President’s activist stance, these are largely local decisions, as Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy Homeland Security secretary and former Virginia attorney general, noted Tuesday on CNN.

“The federal government can’t order schools to do A, B or C,” he said. “Certainly, the President is seeking the maximum reopening we can get not just of schools, but of the economy.”

New CDC guidance for school districts is expected next week, according to Vice President Mike Pence, although we should point out that states (at Trump’s prodding) didn’t follow CDC guidelines for opening up. And now cases of coronavirus are resurging.

We haven’t even addressed a number of key issues, like:

Transportation. Can old buses be crammed full of kids?

Teachers. Kids might be less likely to get sick, but teachers are not kids. Their unions have already had plenty to say about safety for adults who work in school buildings, including custodial workers and other staff.

After care. Assuming school days are truncated or staggered, that’s not going to help parents get back to work full time. The care that local governments provide in addition to school can be just as important to parents.

If Trump could make these things happen, the country would have reopened by Easter. That was never going to happen.

A completely different crisis for foreign students

While the federal government cannot force K-12 schools to open, it can apply pressure, as it’s now trying to do with universities planning an online-only fall.

In a news release Monday, ICE said that students who fall under certain visas “may not take a full online course load and remain in the United States,” adding, “The U.S. Department of State will not issue visas to students enrolled in schools and/or programs that are fully online for the fall semester nor will U.S. Customs and Border Protection permit these students to enter the United States.”

The agency suggested that students currently enrolled in the US consider other measures, like transferring to schools with in-person instruction. There’s an exception for universities using a hybrid model, such as a mix of online and in-person classes.

“We’re not forcing universities to reopen,” Cuccinelli said during that CNN interview. “However, if a university … if they don’t reopen this semester, there isn’t a reason for a person holding a student visa to be present in the country. They should go home. Then they can return when the school opens. That’s what student visas are for, and we want to accommodate that for schools, and we’re working hard to do that.”

But it puts both students (who may be from countries with Covid travel restrictions) and schools (which rely on foreign student revenue) in a tough spot.

The guidance “undermines the thoughtful approach taken on behalf of students by so many institutions, including Harvard, to plan for continuing academic programs while balancing the health and safety challenges of the global pandemic,” said Harvard University President Larry Bacow.

Trump’s pressure campaign

Trump was focused on education during an event at the White House, where he suggested anyone who doesn’t immediately want to open schools is doing it for political reasons.

“We hope that most schools are going to be open,” Trump said at a White House event on reopening schools safely. “We don’t want people to make political statements or do it for political reasons. They think it’s going to be good for them politically, so they keep the schools closed,” he alleged. “No way.”

That echoed messaging from Trump’s campaign Tuesday insinuating that his campaign rival Joe Biden does not want schools to restart in the fall. “Question of the day for Joe Biden,” Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, tweeted, “Will you side with union bosses who want to keep schools closed or parents who want their kids to keep learning?”

And Trump wasn’t shy about his efforts to influence states the other way. “We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open,” the President said at the White House. “And it’s very important. It’s very important for our country, it’s very important for the well-being of the student and the parents. So we’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on open your schools in the fall.”

It is important. That’s something every single American can agree on.