This was not inevitable. It is a result of the President and his advisors putting magical thinking ahead of preparedness.
They still could.
But it would require investing in three big things.
The places that have reopened safely have have a few common characteristics:
Traditional in-person schooling creates a lot of super-spreading opportunities. But less baseline transmission means fewer cases that can super-spread.
All helpful, but not enough to offset elevated local transmission and/or poor testing. And all require more $$.
Instead the Trump administration spent the summer assuring us that the worst was past, and that we should all just back to normalcy.
And now it's all predictably falling apart.
There is no inherent binary trade-off between sub-par zoom learning vs unsafe classrooms.
Poor preparedness is a choice. In this case, a choice grounded in magical thinking and the President's ego, rather than doing what's best for kids.
The problem is not the people deciding to close schools; the problem is the leaders who didn't put in the work to enable schools to safely reopen.