COVID-19 Outbreak Information Updates (Reboot) [over 150.000,000 US cases (est.), 6,422,520 US hospitilizations, 1,148,691 US deaths.]

A HUGE part of the problems have been poor leadership in education. There are absolutely different skills and strategies in being an effective and engaging classroom teacher, and being an effective and engaging virtual teacher. These skills were not considered in many cases when deciding which teachers would do what type of education. To follow up with that very little energy and efforts were made to teach these skills, and many teachers felt like they had little to no support with learning these skills, student and parent accountability, technical troubles, or even emotional/mental health issues.

You are absolutely 100% correct when you say it's not black and white, we could have done a lot of things differently, and better, but taking the position that "closing schools was a mistake" is completely inaccurate and narrowminded.
Agreed. My daughter, from her experience, said that the teachers had very little interaction with the students via Zoom and it felt like communication was almost entirely one direction. Part of the issue is kids didn't know how to participate fully compared to in class. I don't know if the teachers didn't have the resources or lacked training for remote teaching, but it was definitely a big change and I don't think they ever really adjusted fully to remote teaching. Your point about the different dynamics for teachers needing skills that are appropriate for remote teaching is well taken. I would have liked school boards and schools to have done more to help teachers adjust.

That said, teachers themselves are dealing with an incredible amount of stress and they get paid diddly to do a crap ton of work. They are criminally underpaid.