> Yes, politicians and teachers' unions share most of the blame. It's unconscionable how long they insisted on keeping schools closed, despite the massive impact on families and students and the minimal danger posed to kids. I feel sympathy for parents who are trying their best to survive while teachers have taken this as an excuse to work even less.

I don't know what to make of the teachers' unions. My personal experience with individual teachers is that they work plenty, and what I saw during remote school was no exception. (Being a kindergarten teacher over Zoom is hard!) And I never heard a particular teacher in my area advocate for closed or remote schools.

But school administrators blamed the teachers' unions a fair bit for being slow to reopen. In general I suspect school administrators were looking to blame someone else for their own leadership failings, but there still might be some truth in it. I could see how the unions might have adopted the position of the most risk-adverse (and/or laziest) of the teachers.