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It’s progress in the age of COVID-19.

At least he’s at school, right?

Like every parent I know, I hope my teenagers go to school this fall, and not the kind that involves them in their bedrooms at home, peering at a Zoom video, exchanging one screen for another, but real school, with real friends, with high school sports and my daughter in the fall middle school play.

I fear it’s not going to happen.

Months ago, as the pandemic was still growing before we ended up on the backside of the curve that hasn’t exactly flattened yet, and most certainly is rising in many parts of the country, I wrote about those competing emotions, hope and fear, particularly as it related to getting the kids out of the house, seeing their friends, playing sports, just living.

They continue to consume me, and most people I know. Now, in July, we hope for in-person school come August but we fear it isn’t going to happen.

As he did with testing, and then with masks, and with pretty much every element of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump is trying to turn the school decision into something partisan, threatening, without any constitutional or moral authority, for those schools that don’t open for in-person classes this fall.

And in a bit of cruelty, he announced that foreign students studying at our nation’s universities would lose their travel privileges and face deportation if they didn’t attend in-person classes, before wiser minds convinced him to drop that plan.

Let’s not let the president turn this decision into another political litmus test.

There are not two sides here.

Everybody is rooting for schools to open: the parents, the children, the teachers and local businesses. But we all know what happens if it isn’t done right. We are seeing it as college and professional sports try to start up in their unique bubbles in Orlando and elsewhere, and there are starts and stops as athletes and coaches and staff members test positive for COVID-19.

There are athletes skipping a season for health reasons. The Ivy League has canceled all fall sports, including football; other leagues are refusing to play football games outside their league. On Monday, the school districts in San Diego and Los Angeles announced they would be due to spiking COVID-19 cases in California.

We are seeing it in St. Louis, where this week St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said that youth sports are “the primary source of spread in the community.�

Consider me guilty as charged. Maybe.

In the past few weeks I’ve dipped my toes in the waters of society again, having one-on-one meetings on quiet bar patios or in mostly empty offices, with a mask on when necessary. I’ve toured pretty much every high school baseball field in St. Charles, Franklin, St. Francois and Jefferson counties, trying not to be rude as I slide my chair down the right field line to properly social distance. My wife and I have let our children restart some activities, though they are drastically different from before.

With all my heart, I want school to start this fall. That’s not a Democratic ideal or a Republican one. It stems from the love I have for two teenagers undergoing the strangest most isolated year of their lives, and I wonder how much it will affect them going forward.

But it’s what we don’t know, and can’t see, that causes a pause. Twice in the past week, I tried to set up a meeting with a news source who declined because they have a wife who is in a high-risk health category. I think about the teachers I know, and their spouses, and the principals, and the hall monitors, and the coaches and police officers who roam the halls. I think about all the people they know and love who would be put in danger if we rush to open schools without taking the proper precautions.

COVID-19 is a silent killer, carried often by the children in our schools, many of whom won’t ever show symptoms, but spread to our neighbors and their grandparents in the most deadly way.

On Monday, teachers in the city of St. Louis held a protest outside their administration building. It’s not that they don’t want to go to school in the fall.

They just want to do it right, to be safe, to let the science guide us, not some trumped up political spin that pushes us to reopen too soon, and then have to start over again as the death toll continues to climb.