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Functioning schools during a pandemic are emergent phenomena, just like a healthy economy is, just like a stable climate is.
You can't 'order' such things to happen, all you can do, (what you must do) is create the underlying conditions that allow what you want to see to emerge.
Underlying conditions would be things like low levels of community transmission, parental confidence in safety measures, adequate teacher training and support, modifications to the physical plant, etc.
You actually cannot bully or command complex adaptive systems into doing what you want, not over long timescales.
You can fake or hide the data that show that the system isn't doing what you commanded.
You can use violence to force something to happen when the underlying conditions are not 'ripe'(like threaten schools with withdrawal of funding).
But you'll need to use continued violence to sustain your edict, and there will be compensating feedback loops that rise up in response
Grow, I command the tomato plants in my garden in all caps. GROW OR ELSE!!!! Nope. No amount of shouting or pulling on the tender young plants will give me the ripe tomatoes I desire.
Water, soil, time, air temperature, weed control, nutrients, pest management. If I want a bushel of red delicious tomatoes, my only way to get them is by trying to create the right conditions and giving it time.
And still, there are no guarantees, as many a less than bountiful tomato crop has taught me.
You all know this, you who tend families and research groups and gardens and businesses and communities.
That we let people who don't know that this is how the universe works anywhere near the seats of power is our undoing.
