lowest common denominator thinking

I would argue that you are making this sound harder than it was going to be. But for sake of argument, I'll assume you are correct and that there was *no way* to ventilate your wife's school.

So why did students in well ventilated schools have go remote for that reason?

In fact, my issue is that teachers unions and democratic city leaders used a 'lowest common denominator' way of thinking their default response to the pandemic. "Hey, some miniscule percentage of households have a grandmom at home so no one anywhere can go to school in person."

If you want to know what drove me insane that's what it was. There was always some hypothetical monster in the closet to keep schools closed. When I say to ditch your attitude that's what I mean. I don't mean that your wife's classroom could have been made serviceable and she's a bad person. I mean that your wife's situation should not have any impact on the system at large AND letting it do so was what got us into a never ending justification to close schools.

In my opinion, incredibly risk averse / innumerate people were in charge of the decision around risk mitigation and we got no kids in school through spring of 2021 as a result. Ewill reported from the front and is definitely more risk averse than I am but even now says it was stupid to do what we did with schools.

Finally, it's not arrogant to point out these failings. It is proper. As others have pointed out, no one that made decisions has come out with an after action review to talk about what worked and didn't work. The best response to this all has been on south park where the guys make the point that everyone was stressed and doing their best. That said, the best of some folks was awful and if we are going to heal as a nation there needs to be some accountability.

Without it, there is a lot of simmering anger that is going to boil over.