First off, welcome! That was an interesting read.
I have yet to see data that correlates districts that had e-schools and virtual schools long before COVID to the discussion of "learning loss" during COVID years.
I know our local school district had an e-school for many years prior to 2020 and while the number of data points isn't large, the data still isn't being analyzed anywhere that I've seen.
Some states, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina for instance, have had virtual schools prior(often long prior) to 2020 of varying sizes. It seems like these students would be an interesting and important comparison, would it not?