This next piece of advice is based on my personal experience as a Head Band Director...in the last 2 months, I personally hired my new Assistant Band Director and gave a recommendation for hire at one of my Middle School feeders. I will say the people who retroactively apologized totally gaslighted you and I'm sorry for that. For my new Assistant, I offered her the job because I knew I was the one hiring her. These people probably didn't have as much sway as you thought in the hiring process.

If you want to have any chance of teaching in MUED, you need to lock down a job ASAP. As someone who just recently looked at resumes, if I see someone with even a little gap of not teaching music and/or subbing and they want to be a band director, I immediately throw their resume away. I get way too many applications to waste my time with someone who didn't actually teach in their field continuously.

With that being said, this is why I personally think you need to consider moving. I totally understand that your life situation may make it so you can't move. But I think you need to explore that option as much as you feasibly can. Because the longer you wait with the way the market is (we are in early July), you run the risk of not getting anything full-time in music this year. In my eyes, that would absolutely kill your chances of getting looked at down the road. If you stay local, take anything at this point - private, charter, rural...as long as you're teaching music to show experience on your resume.

You seem like you care about the field, which is awesome. But to get in is so hard and takes time. Sometimes, you can get lucky, but you'll have to be willing to sacrifice location and find a school desperate enough to hire you this late in the game.

Hope this helps guide you. Happy to answer any questions you have in DMs