President Donald Trump on Tuesday escalated his push for schools to reopen in the fall, saying "young people do extraordinarily well" with the coronavirus, despite several states citing increased numbers of young people contracting the virus.
"We're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open," Trump said. "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."
Trump was speaking with a select group of education stakeholders at the White House. The group included no dissenters, and most participants outwardly praised the president for his work on the virus.
The U.S. reports the most cases and deaths from the virus of any nation. Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said on Monday that "we are still knee deep in the first wave of this." But Trump continued to deliver only positive outlooks on the situation, saying "we understand the disease much better."
"Now we're open, and we want to stay open, and we will stay open. We're not closing. We'll put out the fires as they come out," he said.
Trump also criticized Harvard's decision to move all classes online for the fall.
"I think it's ridiculous," Trump said. "I think it's an easy way out, and I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves, if you want to know the truth."
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos earlier in the day rejected hybrid models, in which schools only open for some days of the week. She reportedly urged schools to be "fully operational" during a call with governors and said at the meeting with the president that returning students to school in the fall "is not a question of if, it's just a question of how."
"It's clear our nation's schools must fully reopen and fully operate this school year," DeVos said. "Anything short of that robs students – not to mention taxpayers – of their futures."
The White House meeting came a day after Florida announced that its schools would reopen for in-person teaching in the fall, despite the state experiencing record high numbers of new coronavirus cases.
Vice President Mike Pence said that the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control will issue new guidance on reopening next week.