Trump threatens to cut funding for schools, slams CDC reopening guidelines as too tough and expensive - CNBC

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ramped up his pressure campaign to get public schools to fully reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic, tweeting Wednesday that he may withhold federal funding from schools that do not resume in-person classes this fall. .

The tweet was the latest step in an administration-wide effort to convince schools nationwide that the risks of not reopening for in-person classes outweigh those posed by the coronavirus pandemic, which has reached record levels across the country in recent weeks. .

Nonetheless, the White House is exploring ways to use the next coronavirus relief bill to tie the slice of school funding that does come from Washington to the pace of different schools' reopenings. .

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence confirmed that the Trump administration is looking to the upcoming Phase 4 coronavirus relief bill as a potential way to exert leverage over schools.

Shortly after Trump's first tweet about defunding schools, the president pivoted to attacking his own administration's health guidelines for reopening schools, calling them tough, expensive and impractical.

But instead of laying out a plan to enable schools to meet the existing CDC guidelines, Pence said that next week the CDC will "be issuing five new documents." These documents will include new guidelines on preparing communities for school reopenings, as well as "decision making tools for parents and caregivers," and "symptom screening considerations" for students and teachers. .

But with the traditional start of the school year just weeks away, there are still few concrete plans in place on either the state or the federal level to help schools determine how best to reopen safely.

The president's threat to cut off school funding and his subsequent attack on the CDC prompted a swift rebuke from governors and educators, who have been saying for months that more federal funding will be needed if schools are to safely reopen in the fall. .

The nation's second largest teachers union announced the launch Wednesday of a $1 million ad campaign aimed at lobbying Congress to approve additional funds to help schools prepare for the demands of reopening in the midst of a pandemic that shows no sign of abating.

"We can't reopen the economy without reopening schools, and we can't reopen schools without the resources to do so safely," said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which sponsored the ad campaign.

"Ultimately, it's not a matter of if schools need to open, it's a matter of how," DeVos said during a conference call with the nation's governors

"School[s] must reopen, they must be fully operational." Partial reopenings that combined in-person classes with online learning were unacceptable, she said

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, listed several of the most basic safety measures the CDC recommends that schools adopt in order to safely reopen