That would be reading too much into it. That memo unequivocally stated they prefer school to be in person. Those are not the guidelines on HOW to reopen like you correctly pointed out. The fact is that they did put out guidelines to open safely, not guidelines to just go remote and not even try. You took that quote about limiting or cancelling extra curricular and focused on the cancel word. I see the limited word in that sentence and mitigate word. It's an opinion, and one from the top agency that says you can do these things. They want these things. They link the references for these things. The CDC has come out and said here's what we believe, here are the guidelines, it's time to be creative to get these opportunities for the kids. Not find ways to cancel it all. I suppose it comes down to how negative or positive one is reading all this and how much you want to find solutions or not.
I still stand by the memo as a pretty clear cut path to do everything we want in school and sports if you are willing to take precautions and think about the kids first.
I'm just reading it, not reading too much into it. The point is that EVERYONE prefers schools to be open in person. So of course it unequivocally states that schools should try to be in person. That's actually never been a point of debate. The question has always been about HOW you should open them and what needs to be done to prioritize safety.
If you are "limiting participation in activities where social distancing is not feasible" - I'm not sure how to not take that any other way than to strongly reconsider holding football this fall. We wouldn't really be "limiting" anything if a 100 player team plays an 80 player team with refs/coaches/chain gang/etc, regardless of no fans/spectators.
The guidelines are clear that any case will result in groups of kids being quarantined (a potential issue for sports). You've made clear in other posts that "one case shouldn't shut down a school" and the guidelines agree with you, but they also state that if the school is the source of an outbreak of cases or has a higher positivity rate than the area - then it should consider a temporary closing.
Overall it describes many precautions that would be restrictive and have a negative effect on the pedagogy of the actual teaching. The school environment it describes is one that is both limiting on how schools operate and requires lots of flexibility of schools since they may be temporarily closing, or having a lot more staff out each day, and pods of students that are quarantined. At the very least, I think reading it as something else than doing "everything we want in school and sports if you are willing to take precautions" is definitely fair. These guidelines have a lot of effects on general operations - specifically for schools in dense areas like Cook County that are very likely to have some localized outbreaks.
