Donald Trump is getting way ahead of himself again. Imagine that, if you can.

Now he says “everyone” wants children to return to the classroom this fall. The “Educator in Chief,” though, is speaking way out of school, if you’ll pardon the pun. I am among the “everyone” to whom he refers and I am not yet ready to push our children back into classrooms.

Medical experts, including those who are “advising” him on the pandemic response, say something different. They caution against rushing to reopen public school classrooms. Donald Trump won’t be dissuaded from pursuing this latest form of political idiocy.

I no longer have kids in school. I do have a couple of grandkids, though, who finished the 2019-20 academic year at home. Their schools in Collin County, Texas, might decide to reopen their classrooms, or they might decide to keep the students at home, providing them with online study materials. Last time I looked, Texas’s rate of COVID-19 infection was soaring into the sky.

This gets directly to one of the points I want to make. Which is that these decisions will occur at the state level in conjunction with what local school officials recommend. The president of the United States has no authority to dictate what schools systems should do, just as he didn’t have any authority to order states to reopen their business communities.

Oh, but Trump now says he might withhold federal money to those states that do not order their schools to reopen their classrooms.

This is nothing but political bullying.

Do I want my grandkids back in class? Sure … but only if their schools can assure us they will be safe, that they will return to a learning environment that protects them from needless exposure to potential harm from a dangerous virus.

If they can’t provide that assurance, then students should stay home … and Donald Trump needs to keep his trap shut!