Definitely. I left classroom teaching at the outbreak of the pandemic because of a health condition. Winnipeg is having it rough with teacher shortages, but I'd imagine rural is even worse and northern MB is worse still. I'm not connected to the teacher who passed away on Christmas, but it was reported that she was triple vaccinated and otherwise healthy and only had symptoms around December 20th.
I think closing school would have an effect, but it wouldn't stop the spread. Not by a long shot. Judging by ages of cases, I believe schools have been the biggest spreader over the past few months. Many kids being asymptomatic, but spreading also shows lower numbers at younger ages, but higher at older ages. I think Omicron and weaker vaccine effectiveness against Omicron will balance the numbers out more, but I'd imagine kids are still big spreaders. Unfortunately Omicron is also affecting them with an increase of hospitalization in kids over 50% in December alone (US numbers).
I think its disgusting that more isn't done to close bars/nightclubs/etc. when our testing capacity is maxed out and we don't know how many cases there are. Our hospitals are at the max to the point where non-Covid patients are dying unnecessarily. I also think its time to consider bumping down unvaccinated Covid cases in terms of ICU/hospital priority.