President Donald Trump said Monday at the White House that schools should reopen in the Fall, despite some cities announcing they would delay the reopening of their schools as the coronavirus pandemic continued.
“The schools should be opened. Kids want to go to schools. You’ll lose a lot of lives keeping things closed,” Trump replied when asked by reporters about the news that Los Angeles public schools announced that they would have “online-only” classes this Fall.
The Trump administration has argued for schools to reopen in the Fall.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that the administration was considering withholding funding from schools that refused to reopen in the fall:
America investment in education is a promise to students and their families. If schools aren’t going to reopen and not fulfill that promise, they shouldn’t get the funds. Then give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise.
Trump defended school and business closures earlier in the cycle of the pandemic, noting that the administration had saved “millions of lives” in doing so.
But the president said the virus did not present a threat to young people, which meant that it was safe to reopen schools.
“For some reason, I guess the immune system is much stronger with young people than it is for others,” Trump said. “So we have to watch the group that does have the difficulty, does have the problem.”