Reopening them could allow parents to return to work, Trump's advisers reasoned. Without kids in classrooms, no other area of the economy could really bounce back. Anecdotally, many aides knew parents -- and especially moms -- who felt stretched by home-schooling and child care.

And many believed a focus on kids and classrooms would play well with a group of Trump voters whose support was beginning to soften: White suburban women.

Yet as Trump pushes to fully open schools in a matter of weeks, his efforts are being met by defiant districts, worried parents and teachers, and confusion about what exactly his administration is recommending schools do to keep students safe should they open their doors.

Now, an effort that many inside the White House expected would prove widely popular has come to typify Trump's halting efforts to confront the pandemic. He has undercut his administration's public health experts in the name of returning the country to normal. Instead of providing clear instructions or mandates for how to combat the virus, Trump is issuing sweeping directives without saying how they should be achieved. And, through Trump's own making, the issue has become a political litmus test alongside mask-wearing and public gatherings.

Additional guidance promised by the administration has been delayed. Internally, aides are scrambling to compile additional research to convince Americans that keeping kids at home poses more danger than sending them into classrooms after encountering unexpected resistance to their plans.

This week, White House officials and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have sparred over the rollout of additional guidance meant to encourage school reopenings, creating another point of friction in a relationship that has remained tense throughout the pandemic response.

To some inside the White House, the urgency is months or weeks too late -- coming well after administrators began determining plans for the fall and behind initiatives to open places viewed by some as less important drivers for the economy, such as gyms, restaurants and churches.

"We should have started with schools," one senior administration official said this week. "Nothing can really reopen until the schools open."

School push

For much of the spring -- as coronavirus raged the first time and Trump began insisting states reopen their churches, restaurants and shops -- a small group of his advisers urged him to focus on reopening schools instead.

But those arguments did not appear to register with the President. While he made a vocal push to reopen houses of worship and convened roundtables with restaurant owners and retailers, Trump did not turn his attention fully to schools until earlier this month.

By then, another surge in cases (prompted, in part, by the early reopenings) was spreading across the country. And districts -- using guidance from the federal government that Trump later deemed overly burdensome -- had already begun making decisio

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