It’s true there are serious reasons to keep schools fully open. But this is defining “right” down as calling for a favorable outcome without doing any of the work to get it and, in fact, actively sabotaging the process at multiple turns https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/opinion/coronavirus-school-closures.html

Trump cannonballed into a delicate schools debate by demanding full opening with no plan whatsoever to do it. He attacked the CDC’s guidelines without laying any groundwork for an alternative. He spooked stakeholders everywhere. We STILL don’t have a new school funding bill.

Nor was there any national plan to prioritize schools by keeping cases down elsewhere — to the contrary, Trump actively decried almost any attempt to do so. And local govts, with businesses and workers out of aid, couldn’t make these decisions themselves without a relief bill.

There were lots of health experts warning about the damage of kids being left out of schools, but that’s why they usually were demanding a plan to fund a safe reopening and contain the virus in communities. Did that happen? It did not.

Democrats bear responsibility too, especially as health experts increasingly push toward keeping schools open (especially for younger kids). But this is like taking one of his vague “That never should have happened” answers and extrapolating out an actual coherent policy.