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"I took my routine and school for granted." "The workload has been overwhelming" "Impossible to learn anything new" "Anxious I will not be able to maintain online access" "I miss seeing everyone, especially my friends." "I am actually quite fond of it." "A lot of the time, I get confused." "I’m missing out on my “high school experience."

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current events conversation

Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation.

But some students have discovered that they enjoy getting to work at their own pace, set their own schedule and be free from "the stressful environment of school."

Others, though, recounted the challenges of distance learning, from struggling to understand assignments and getting easily distracted to not having reliable internet. "If you had told me a few months ago that I would be praying to go to school, I would've laughed and called you crazy, but I would do anything to go back to my school," Hannah from Nashville said.

Before we get to the rest of the comments, we'd like to give a warm welcome to the new students who joined the conversation this week from:

Barcelona; Berkeley, Calif.; Brighton, Mich.; Buckeye, Ariz.; Dawson High School; Easton, Conn.; Englewood, Colo.; Forest Lake Christian School, Auburn, Calif.; Fruitland, Idaho; Fulton Science Academy, Alpharetta, Ga.; Hawkins, Ind.; Irving, Tex.; Lacey, Wash.; Lawrenceville, N.J.; London; Long Beach, Wash.; Malverne, N.Y.; Martin Luther School-Maspeth, Queens, N.Y.; Mexico; New Orleans, La.; Rochester, N.Y.; Roland Grise Middle School; Sunnyvale, Calif.; WLSA Shanghai Academy and Yakima, Wash.
Please note: Student comments have been lightly edited for length, but otherwise appear as they were originally submitted.

Nate Ridgway, a social studies teacher in Beech Grove, Ind., introducing an online lesson. "Anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of my students may not have internet access at home," he said.

School is a place for building friendships, learning responsibility, and getting an escape from the house, but it seems as though the Coronavirus has taken that all away from us. For me, I loved getting to see my friends everyday in the school environment. Now that it's taken away from me, I realize now that school was my main source of communicating with people. Now I feel as though I'm losing friendships I had at school since we can't go anymore. School also taught us responsibility. I had a schedule when going to classes and when to wake up and go to bed. Now that I have no reason to have a schedule, I have been going to bed and waking up much later than I used to. There also seems to be a lack of motivation for me now to accomplish tasks because at school, we were given an hour and a half each day to get work done in class but now I keep pushing assignments back until the last second. This definitely won't be beneficial to my work ethic in the upcoming senior year for me ... Thanks to the Coronavirus, I have decided to make every moment of my senior year count and not take it for granted as I did for the past three years of high school.

- Owen Midgette, Norfolk, VA

I did not realize that I took my routine and school day for granted until now. My online school day consists of waking up at 10 am instead of 6 am, working on my laptop in my bed instead of a classroom, and now I make my own schedule. While this sounds pretty enjoyable for any teenager, it has made me miss school. I miss walking down the hallways with my friends. I miss sitting in a classroom with a teacher and other students, having discussions and asking questions. I miss the loud and crazy lunchroom. I truly miss things I didn't even know that I loved about my school. If you had told me a few months ago that I would be praying to go to school, I would've laughed and called you crazy, but I would do anything to go back to my school.

Something I find really special about my high school is that we are really focused on student-centered learning. We use a Harkness-style teaching method where all the students and the teacher sit at a round table together and instead of learning through lecturing, we learn from each other. Peer-to-peer interaction is a really pivotal part of education at my school, and it feels like it falls so short in our distance learning. We use Zoom and can see one another and our teacher, but everyone is always muted so as not to interfere with background noise. Our classes have been cut down by ten minutes and instead of having six classes a day, we only have three or four classes synchronously. I feel like my education is not being fulfilled. I have a significant lack of motivation and I miss the thought-provoking discussions I used to have with my classmates during physical school. I am really anxious to get back to school and really foster my love of learning through my peers.

- Emily Barkley, Lawrenceville, NJ

"Oh my goodness ... Why there is so much homework?" This was my first reaction to online study as I looked at the homework checklist. Due to the outbreak, most activities, including daily clubs, are canceled at present, thus we do not have much to do at home. At least teachers believe so; therefore, tons of homework overwhelms us everyday. However, we actually get much to do everyday besides homework: standardized tests, such as TOEFL, SAT, AP, etc., needed to be prepared; activities that could be done indoor had to be completed ... Homework is the straw which breaks the camel's back. How I hope that assignment could be a little less and more time could be controllable by ourselves! I am now in China. Online study has already taken place for 2 months so far. Sometimes I really wish to go back to school having lessons face to face with teachers and classmates. School is not only a place for study, but a place to prepare us for future life when we embark upon complicated society and interpersonal relationship. Online education cannot replace school system thoroughly in this aspect. I really miss normal school days. Is the day of returning far?

The workload ... has been overwhelming. The thought process of my teachers seems to be "Oh they have all of this free time now, so I can assign them more work than I normally would."Or at least something along the lines of that, because my teachers haven't let up one bit. That's been the most challenging part of remote learning, because I get easily distracted when I try to work in my house, and that I have even more work than normal, it's challenging to get everything done. I have been able to keep up with what we've been learning for the most part, but it would be nice to have a teacher that could answer my questions and help me in person.

I'm in my second week of online distance learning and it's exhausting! Yes, school now starts at 9 am and we end at around 2:30, so it's not like I'm doing school work all day. However, now I'm on the computer for about 4 or 5 hours at a time. Before the whole pandemic happened, I only spent about an hour, maybe 2 on the computer both at school and at home. At the end of the day, I don't want to see another computer for a while. I actually did some research (on the computer) and I found that I was suffering from computer fatigue. Yep, it's a real thing.

I also find it very hard to find an 'escape' from school. Since it all takes place at my home, destressing has become more difficult because I feel like school is there with me the entire day. I really hope, in the near future, we will be returning to our school since I am not receiving the best education at home.

From what I have been through for the past two weeks is that online schooling is really a double edge knife. For example, it's quite nice working at your own pace so you're able to be less stressed with deadlines. But at the same time because of that, I have had a great deal of trouble keeping up with all of the work that my teachers have been putting onto me. That's mostly because my pace is slower than most of my other classmates because my dyslexia and ADHD make it a lot harder to keep things on track because of how free things are. My teachers have been very understanding about it but there is only some much that they can do and I'm honestly quite scared for my end of the year grades. I have done fine this year grade-wise A's and B's but since this started they have been going down a bit and I'm not sure what to do because I'm doing what I can but it's not doing anything to help my grades go up. So I'm just praying for the best at this point.

I enjoy the new schedule that internet school has given me, since I finally have time to sleep as much as I need and feel well rested and ready to work. Though my new schedule is beneficial, I find it impossible to actually learn anything new through the distance learning. It's easier for me to get distracted and be lazy with my work, so I'm starting to hate the daily mundanity of distance learning. I never thought I'd want to be back in school until now.

- Cali, King of Prussia, PA

Digital learning hasn't been the best experience for me. I'm constantly caught in this game of tug of war of too much work and too little. Sometimes I'll have three projects and four assignments due in one day and other days, I'll have nothing. The lack of social interaction I, as well as my classmates, are enduring is also a huge factor in me not enjoying online schooling. Only one of my classes has actual online meetings where we can talk, while the others just keep posting work. I can't learn like that though, so I haven't really retained any of the information I just spit back at them for a grade.

- Emma B., Cass High School, Georgia

Online school has been a stressful process for many of my friends and me. I live in an area where internet access and WiFi are hard to get and, as a result, I'm not only stressed about school but I'm often anxious that I will not be able to join and maintain access to online classes and assignments. Working at home is hard for me as well since there is no distinct separation of school v.s home. Normally at school, I am able to focus as it is a work environment and I am constantly communicating face-to-face with those around me. At home, I want to get up and go outside and stop staring at my iPad, it gives me headaches and I am tired of looking at it after 4-5 hours a day. Many of my teachers have been seemingly understanding of the issues caused by online school, but at the same time, they are continuing to give the normal work-load.

So far, no, our schools have not yet switched to online. However, they have given us a long list of websites and activity suggestions to keep students occupied in learning while the School District figures out what to do for us ... My sister and I just recently came up with our own schedules (which consists of some of the suggested websites and activities of our own) which was fun! I started my school schedule today, since I just got off of Spring Break. My biggest concern, if they do switch to online (which will most likely occur soon) is the lack of technology my family has (like Dana Goldstein writes about in the first paragraph of the article). The School District just sent out a survey to see who is lacking the school supplies necessary to be involved in online school, so hopefully they will be able to rent out computers to families who need them, like mine. We only have one laptop, and sharing one with a timed schedule would be impossible! I'm keeping my fingers crossed! :)

Sarah Giddings, a high school teacher in Ypsilanti, Mich., during a collaborative meeting with a student about her progress in geometry/art class.

Out of the concerns that Ms. Goldstein expresses, the most relevant one is how schools provide so much more than academics. Social interaction, a way to exercise ... I miss seeing everyone, especially my friends, even that teacher who talks too much ... I mean, at least they're there to explain the assignment. Zoom calls and texting and Google Hangouts just can't replace face-to-face interaction. I'm a dancer too, and dance has always been so infallible to me, I felt like even if schools shut down it would somehow still be there. But it wasn't. Sometimes I just feel really lost because I feel like I don't have anything to hold onto. I'm just trying to do well in "class" and waiting for this to end.

I too believe that school is more than just academics alone. School is what makes the basis of our early lives, 14 years of work, stress, and success. Not to mention all the great people you meet along the way, such as our mentors and teachers, as well as our lifelong friends. The activities I miss the most in school are going to my locker early in the morning, having quick chats with friends and colleagues, and roaming the halls listening to music. After school activities are another story, I miss going to track practice, making jokes with friends on a local loop (1.5 mile run around campus), and getting a good workout in for the day (thanks Mr. Frazer).

Last week was the second week of E-Learning for my school, and I am actually quite fond of it. While I do understand the social aspect of school - as someone with an Anxiety Disorder lack of sleep and work load gets to me quickly, making this honestly an enjoyable experience for me. I feel as though I can learn the material at my own pace and on my own time, with breaks when I need them. With the stressful environment of school being significantly reduced, in my mind the pros of E-Learning outweigh the cons. I enjoy getting to know my teachers and classmates but I think there is a lot to be learned from the teaching and learning style we've had to embrace.

- Ella Mastin, Glenbard West HS

With the new shift to online schooling, I feel like an adult working from home. I get to organize my work schedule so that it works best for me, and I get to complete all of my work from the comfort of my own room. In the mornings I put on a nice shirt, so I look put together when attending online instructional Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings, but what the camera, my teachers, and my peers cannot see is that I am actually lounging around in the comfort of my sweatpants.

Before a normal school day involved me waking up at 5:45 and returning home at 3:30. Now, I wake up at whatever time I'd like, which has had a positive effect on me, reducing my levels of stress overall. I find that I am able to stay on task effectively, as I am able to work at my own pace and at the time I choose to. I find myself adequately occupied with work, as I have spent an average of 3 hours a day on schoolwork, which I feel is the same amount of work I completed in school, with the rest of the hours wasted on irrelevant information. I miss the social aspect most of school, as a social life is impossible to maintain virtually ... In addition, the freed time has allowed me to pursue interests not supported by the public school system, as I have had more time to learn to code, and even accomplished creating a Virtual Private Network from scratch.

Since I can plan out my day myself, I feel it suits me better than what school puts students through, though it is challenging to learn new topics of some subjects without direct explanation from a teacher.

I am starting my third week of remote learning and let me tell you, I can not wait for the day this whole thing is over. My school went directly into remote learning around the time the first confirmed case was found in my state and I do not like it. I find myself getting distracted much easier and find myself procrastinating more and more. I'm not motivated to complete some work until I realize it will impact my grade, unlike normal school. A lot of the time, I get confused. I don't have the luxury of being able to ask my teacher why I need to do different when I don't understand something or don't know what to do and a lot of the time, an email doesn't get back to me in the time I am completing my work.

My first weeks of online classes have been hard because it's difficult to stay on task with all the work we are being assigned by teachers. The work isn't necessarily hard but figuring out how to use the different websites and when a new assignment has been posted takes a while. I am getting better at this as I go just like my classmates but sometimes I'll miss some assignments I didn't realize were due.

As someone who's family is financially stable and has access to a computer, I can say that it hasn't been extremely hard for me to get my work done. It was hard whenever I didn't understand something and instead of being able to ask my teachers and get an immediate response, I had to email them and wait for them to email me back. I believe that I have it very lucky and I know that some of my peers are struggling a lot.

I know that my school is trying very hard to help the kids, like providing food for children that relied on school lunches and having a curbside pickup for laptop rentals. They also have paper packets that they mailed so if you didn't have access to the internet you could still continue learning and not get too far behind, which helps eliminate Dana Goldstein's concern in that area, but there are still valid points that Goldstein makes that are still problems at my school as well.

Here in England we were all told that schools would almost certainly not shut and if they did it wouldn't be until after Easter. However, our PM closed schools until September and cancelled all exams all of a sudden, even though he said a few hours before he wouldn't even close them for two weeks so none of our teachers were prepared. Frustratingly, my school isn't using Zoom or Google Classroom (and neither are any others that I've heard of) but are instead putting work on to the shared area online which we have to manually search through hundreds of files everyday to find that work that has been set for our classes. Only one subject, English has actually given us instructions and tasks to complete with a weekly deadline - the others have just uploaded random files and past papers etc and not told us what to do or when its due ... I find it really hard to be motivated to do work / study for exams I am not even going to be taking. I wish my school would make all subjects give us specific tasks with deadlines and maybe use online resources such as Google Classroom so that we have more structure.

- Rachel, London, England

The worst part of this experience is the fact that I finally made it to high school and now I'm missing out on my "high school experience." Everyone talks about how high school is some of the greatest years of our life, but right now it's not off to a spectacular start. I'm only a freshman, but the poor seniors are getting hit the hardest. Not being in school means there's no sports, no school dances like Prom, and there might not even be a graduation at this point. Imagine getting to senior year and thinking that it's going to be the best year overall, and then getting told that you won't get to finish your final season of the sport you've played your whole life, or you can't go to your last dance with the people you've been with all of high school. These people might not get to even experience graduation. All of their hard work for the past four years might get handed to them in the form of a PDF or a document in the mailbox.

I have been training for weeks to make state competition for poetry interpretation in Speech and Debate, and to see all my hard work go down the drain is disheartening. I felt like that opportunity was robbed from me. Since I am a junior, I now have to wait until senior year to attempt to attend state and it would be my last chance to do it. I really wish I was able to give it a shot this year.

Personally the main thing I miss is my sports season, I was looking forward to this years lacrosse season the whole year and it was heart breaking to be on day 4 and have it be cancelled.

One of the things I'm missing about school is theater. Before school was closed, I had two shows that were going to be performed the next week and now I don't even know if I'll ever be able to perform the shows. Overall, this remote learning is an F in my book.

- Kayla C., Cass High School, Georgia

Christopher Bakk, a social studies teacher in Racine, Wis., in an introduction video he sent to online students this year.

Everyday my motivation to do my work decreases and recently all my assignments have been turned in late causing my grades to drop. It has also been very difficult because I've had to become my seven-year-old brother's teacher. My parents aren't very fluent in English, so they aren't able to help him with his schoolwork. It's very challenging to keep up with both his work and my work at the same time.

The switch to distance learning has been hard for my family. I'm lucky enough to go to a school that provides each student with a computer, but for the first two weeks my younger brother (age 9) didn't. He was sent home with a folder packed with work, but once that ran out, his teacher expected him to go digital. We have a computer, but it's barely functioning, let alone good enough to run the programs they expected us to use. This was later remedied, but he's also on an IEP which means he's used to one on one learning for math, science, and reading as well as holds a general animosity towards learning in general. We're terrified for what this will do to the progress he's made. My mom has been struggling to teach it to him so she's been enlisting my help. I'm happy to do it, but now I'm tackling two work loads a day on top of everything else going on.

The only thing familiar about my "school days" is getting up in the morning. The similarities come to an abrupt stop there. I eat breakfast each morning with my mom, who now works from home, and converse with her frequently throughout the day. Having a chance to connect with her in this way has is something I am grateful for. During the scheduled lunch break my school includes in its remote learning class schedule, I frequently take naps, mostly out of boredom. Far more distractions - my pet and the availability of food all the time, to name a few - abound as I try to remain engaged in classes and complete assignments. For the most part I am on task, but some of the very same distractions I deal with in school, such as receiving texts from friends or my phone serving as a distraction in and of itself - seem much harder to resist at home. For the most part, though, as a high school senior, I know and accept what work I have to complete and I return to the tried and tested routines that have served me well throughout my high school years.

A school day for me is very different than what I'm used to. I now wake up an hour after I would normally be getting to school, so that's three hours of extra sleep. I think because of this, my sleep schedule is messed up and I don't have the structure we used to all get. I've noticed that staying on task gets harder as the week goes on. We're obviously not at school working with our classmates and teachers, so it is hard for me to focus ... There's no structure, which is making it hard to get up and be productive. Overall, online school makes time management extremely difficult and I feel like I'm not even learning in some of my classes.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Collegeboard announced massive changes to the AP tests: students only have 45 minutes, the tests are now only free response questions, and the major twist, the exams are now online. With this new information, as well as the fact that Collegeboard cut down on the curriculum we are being tested on, many of my classes switched from learning new material to review mode. Instead of preparing for multiple choice questions, I must now scramble to prepare for a writing only test that will determine my fate on whether I receive college credit for the many AP classes I have spent a year taking. My biggest fear now is that it is unknown how the new shortened tests will be graded, leaving me with only the written portion to get a good score on the exam. This added stress was not something I needed in an already stressful year.

As a junior, I have been very stressed about how the rest of the school year will pan out. Constant thoughts running through my head are, "When am I going to take the SAT? How harshly are AP exams going to be graded now? What are colleges going to do for admissions next year?" All of these questions are constant thoughts that most teenagers my age are thinking about right now. The work that we are being provided with now is only supplementary; which, does not help students stay motivated to get their work completed. Teachers are doing the best they can but the ones who truly care about their students' mental health and education are putting in extra time just to help. Sadly, I have one teacher who I know I can count on to go to because she has been sending out constant emails about our AP exams and always asking how we are doing. If as many teachers cared as much as she did, then maybe more students would want to do their work ...

Luckily I have pretty good computer knowledge, but like Ms. Goldstein pointed out, I feel for our teachers who have had to change everything about their classes. Asking teachers to all of sudden offer the same kind of curriculum online is impossible, so it is important we stay patient ... I'm not really thinking about what I need from my teachers as much as what our teachers need from us. All we have to do is stay on task and take this seriously while they have to change their jobs from in school to online in a matter of days. The workload isn't unbearable and the teachers are very lenient, but as long as we don't take advantage of this and stay diligent we can all get through this.

- Estevan, Corpus Christi, Texas

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What Students Are Saying About Remote Learning (Published 2020)

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current events conversation Teenage comments in response to our recent writing prompts, and an invitation to join the ongoing conversation. But some students have discovered that they enjoy getting to work at their own pace, set their own schedule and be free from "the stressful environment of school."

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Harder to Keep Students Engaged with Virtual Lessons

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Harder to Keep Students Engaged with Virtual Lessons

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Procrastination combined with minimal school and parent support causes poor performance. This is much worse for low income children who perform at 20% lower rates.

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YouTube Example of Virtual Learning Being a Disaster!

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YouTube Example of Virtual Learning Being a Disaster!

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*Explicit Warning* These YouTube videos show just how bad zoombombing is destroying the virtual learning environment. Teachers and students are suffering. Some see poor taste humor as funny.

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FBI Says Virtual Learning disrupted by Zoombombing

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FBI Says Virtual Learning disrupted by Zoombombing

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Online high school classes being hijacked with pornographic images and aggressive racism is undermining attempts to educate students.

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In one instance, a high school reported that an unidentified person dialed into a class being held on the Zoom software and broke into a lesson by yelling a profanity and shouting the teacher's home address. At another school, an online class with disrupted by someone who was visibly displaying tattoos of swastikas.

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FBI issues warning about 'hijacking' of online classes by intruders after schools report serious disruptions

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In one instance, a high school reported that an unidentified person dialed into a class being held on the Zoom software and broke into a lesson by yelling a profanity and shouting the teacher's home address. At another school, an online class with disrupted by someone who was visibly displaying tattoos of swastikas.

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Many teachers received a couple of days of training to teach online before being asked to overhaul nearly every facet of their job. Normally this type of teacher training takes many months

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This story about remote learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
After the Arizona State University Preparatory Academy announced on March 13 that it would shift its 11 schools to online learning because of the coronavirus crisis, teacher Theresa Ordell switched to high gear.

The following Monday, the 51-year-old teacher assembled bags of books and worksheets for families of her third and fourth grade students to pick up as they were let in, five at a time, to South Phoenix Primary and Intermediate, a public charter school.

Ordell practiced using the videoconferencing platform Zoom, so she'd be ready to lead class online with her students the next day.

Her students laughed Tuesday morning when she played the classroom theme song, "Get Back Up Again," from the movie "Trolls."

"I said, 'Yeah, with COVID-19, we are going to get back up again.' We made it work."
What's at stake: How coronavirus school closures could cause 'historic academic regression'
Experts say teachers ideally should receive several days, weeks or - better - months of in-depth preparation before launching an online learning program.

But when schools across the USA closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, district leaders eager to keep students learning pushed teachers to pivot quickly to online learning. Many teachers received a couple of days of training before being asked to overhaul nearly every facet of their job. The lucky ones had a couple weeks.
Families are learning on the fly, too: How it's working in 6 home classrooms
The varying amount of training districts provide has created a patchwork of quality and gaps in accessibility. Many teachers improvise, counting on patience from parents and students as they transition to online learning on the fly.

'Not enough time'

"The biggest problem is there is not enough time to really do the training that a teacher needs to understand how to teach online," said Jennifer Mathes, interim chief executive officer of the Boston-based Online Learning Consortium, a nonprofit group that offers webinars and resources on online teaching and learning. "What we are doing right now is more of a Band-Aid to say these are tips and tricks to do remote learning now."

The consortium offers weeklong workshops, but teachers need about three months of courses to really become effective online, Mathes said.

The International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit group based in Arlington, Virginia, requires teachers who want to be certified as online educators to receive 30 hours of face-to-face and online training that can take up to nine weeks, plus six months to curate a portfolio.

Some colleges ask teachers to complete nine credits to receive a certificate in online teaching. Experts in the area say planning, designing and implementing a high-quality online course can take more than a year; the best training is customized to meet teachers where they are and build on their knowledge.
For kids without internet: Quarantined worksheets, learning in parking lots
Instead, many districts are rushing onto the new platform and scanning worksheets for kids to do online - not building engaging, effective online learning, which involves some strategy, said Richard Culatta, chief executive officer of ISTE.

"The approach is all over the place: schools making good choices, schools making bad choices - a whole lot of confusion," said Culatta, who formed a COVID-19 Education Coalition, which includes more than 50 organizations, to curate and vet resources for educators to use for online instruction through a free portal. "Our recommendation is for schools to pause for a minute to take a couple days to think about the learning experience they want to create."

'Train to teach'

In an ideal world, schools would adhere to the standards agreed on for K-12 online learning. Experts suggest offering a combination of live instruction and work that students can do on their own time, rather than replicating bell schedules and expecting students to sit in front of a screen all day.

When learning to teach online, educators should receive at least some of their training, if possible, through an online course, so they experience firsthand what it's like to be a distance-learning student.
Free school lunch programs face terrible choice: Fight coronavirus or students' hunger
"We learn by doing," said Lisa Dawley, executive director of the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education at the University of San Diego. "You have to train in the way you want them to teach. It has to be modeled."

The shift has been easier for schools that had embraced technology before the shutdowns, Culatta said, and some have put more thought and time into the rollout of online learning.

In South Burlington, Vermont, Christie Nold, a sixth grade social studies teacher at Tuttle Middle School, said her district's information technology expert was available for small group and individual help two weeks before her school's closure.

The week before schools closed, digital tools were modeled at faculty meetings, and additional virtual training sessions were held. Nold's team launched its online learning via Google Classroom and other tools they had used before the shutdown. Experts advise that schools use platforms that teachers and students are already familiar with, so they don't overreach or overload students.

"Given the circumstances, I feel really well supported by my district. I'm fortunate that we were given really clear guidelines about what remote learning looks like," said Nold, 35. Still, she has been putting in longer hours than usual doing distance learning and worries about the sustainability of the setup. At the end of the first week of online instruction, the district announced schools would not reopen this spring. "It's a big puzzle we are all trying to sort out together."

Before West Warwick Public Schools in Rhode Island moved to online learning - during the district's spring break - the district ran 80-plus virtual training sessions to familiarize teachers with online tools, such as Google Meet and Flipgrid. Professional development coaches hosted a virtual help desk for struggling teachers who needed extra assistance with tutorials. They created a shared document, so others could see the solutions.

"I don't know how education is going to go back to what it was before this," said Kristin Tuttle, 42, a fifth grade teacher at Deering Middle School in West Warwick. "People have been thrown into a danger-type zone - this is new to us - but I feel like we are all going to grow to from it, and I see us in a few weeks really being much stronger."

'Trying to stay positive'

As the coronavirus threat has extended closures, possibly till the end of the school year in some places, training needs have changed.

Gabriel Serrano, a special education teacher who serves kids from pre-K to third grade, was initially asked to prepare individual paper packets with two weeks of work for his 11 students at Emelita Elementary School in Encino, California, part of the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District. The district suggested several online resources, but Serrano said he was overwhelmed by all the options and wished he had a "cheat sheet" to know which was best to use.

"The first two weeks were a little chaotic. We were advised to do the best we can," said Serrano, who has tried to contact all of his students' families but has yet to connect with some. At the end of the second week of school closures, the district held its first virtual training session for teachers, 90 minutes about how to do distance learning, and gave the teachers until mid-April to complete four more two-hour sessions on their own.

"I'm trying to stay positive. It has been very stressful, but it's new for the kids as well, and me keeping a level head is important for them," Serrano said.
No online learning? With schools closed from coronavirus, these teachers air TV lessons
Aric Foster, 41, is one teacher who is comfortable with technology and wasn't worried personally when the Armada district in rural Michigan did not give teachers formal training for online instruction. His concern was more basic: He knows that all the training in the world won't help him reach students who don't have internet access. Just 35 of his 130 students logged in to his first remote learning English class.

"I worry how much this is going to exacerbate the inequity that already exists," he said.

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Coronavirus 'confusion': Teachers had little training for how to do online classes

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This story about remote learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. After the Arizona State University Preparatory Academy announced on March 13 that it would shift its 11 schools to online learning because of the coronavirus crisis, teacher Theresa Ordell switched to high gear.

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Gilbert, AZ - District scrambles and creates elementary classes with 50 to 100 students per teacher. Teacher shortages becoming a serious problem.

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PHOENIX - Family members were at high risk of COVID-19, so Norma Hernandez said she had no choice but to keep her three kids at home for the school year, rather than send them to school in person.

It's a decision most parents have had to contemplate this year, but the virtual option comes with worrisome trade-offs. In Hernandez's case, her son's fourth grade class in a virtual program in Gilbert, Arizona, has as many as 55 students, an "overwhelming" load for his teacher, she said.

"My son is lucky he has me at home," she said.

While some students returned to classrooms around the country, others remain at home and could stay in the virtual classroom for the next year or even longer because of health concerns.

School districts responded by launching online programs at an unprecedented scale. Parents, caregivers and educators said they're dismayed by online class sizes as high as 100 students in some school districts.

Those organizing virtual programs said larger classes are acceptable, in part because students oftenwork at their own pace in virtual classes. Some programs require a few hours of live instruction a day or even just a few check-ins every week. Experts said some instruction should be live, so kids can see their friends and feel a part of the class.

Many districts with fledgling online programs are learning what the right teacher-student ratio is, said Diana Sirko, superintendent of the Mesa County Valley School District in western Colorado.

"It was like starting a completely new school," she said.

Others worry that ballooning class sizes are a sign of worsening teacher shortages in parts of the country where schools struggled to hire and retain quality teachers even before the pandemic.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman wrote in a statement that she has anecdotally heard of more teachers leaving the field.

"I am deeply concerned about our critical teacher shortage, worsened by COVID-19, that continues to create larger classrooms whether those classrooms are virtual or in-person," she wrote.

Classes with more than 100 students

Valerie Lim has two kids in Gilbert schools. Her first grader's class began the year with 70 kids, and her fourth grader's class started with 53. Lim has asthma, and other family members have health conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID-19, so the family chose virtual school.

"The teachers are overwhelmed," she said. "There's literally no way that you can form the types of connections that you would want to make as a teacher with your students."

Though Gilbert's virtual program includes the promise of one-on-one time between teachers and students, Lim said the time amounts to about 10 minutes a week. It seems like teachers have to "triage" students, she said, and prioritize helping the ones who need it the most.

The heavy workload for teachers raises questions about the virtual experience for students who don't have a parent present to help or who don't have ready access to additional resources.

Gilbert Public Schools teachers work with students in smaller groups and individually on some days, district spokesperson Dawn Antestenis wrote in an email.

"Online teachers have time available to teach more students," she wrote.
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Some districts struggle to keep up with the demand for virtual education.

In Great Falls, Montana, 40 to 60 students are on a wait list for spots in virtual middle and high school classrooms in the public school district, according to Heather Hoyer, an assistant superintendent.

Roughly 1,000 students in grades K-6 enrolled in remote education this year, making class sizes in those grades well beyond 100 students, according to the district.

Hoyer said students who don't actively engage in their remote courses may be asked to return to a face-to-face setting to accommodate students on the wait list.

"If they're not engaging, something's not working, and we need to get them back into a model that works," Hoyer said.

Balancing dozens of students

In West Virginia, one fourth grade teacher was expected to teach math and science to 82 students virtually, said Tega Toney, president of the American Federation for Teachers in Fayette County.

Toney said West Virginia caps class size at no more than 28 students at that level.

"Some districts are trying to skirt this rule by saying virtual classes don't really apply," said Toney, who serves as vice president of the state teachers union.

"It's not really fair and equitable," Toney said. "I would contend that students taking classes virtually would need even more one-on-one attention."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country's second-largest teachers union, said virtual crowding makes it more difficult for children to learn, especially those who are already struggling.
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"Cramming 50, 60, 70 or more students onto a Zoom screen or a Google classroom shows there's no intention for teachers to get to know their students and no intention to stimulate real discussion," Weingarten said.

Teachers of special subjects such as physical education and art are accustomed to working with large numbers of students throughout the day. In normal times, they can attend to everyone face-to-face. Engaging everyone is harder when trying to teach kids remotely and at school, said Rachel Mita, an elementary physical education teacher in Florida's Pinellas County schools.

"I teach 147 students online and 166 students face-to-face," she said.

Mita does not have to teach her in-person and online students simultaneously, like many of her colleagues. The Pinellas County Teachers Association launched a petition to end the practice of simultaneous teaching, which educators said is difficult and doesn't serve all children well.

Because the virus prevents the use of any PE equipment, Mita's classes consist of one large group exercise in which she weaves in necessary standards. Workdays stretch longer because so many at-home students email questions, usually pertaining to how to log in, she said.

"I only have time to copy and paste directions I've already given them, so I can move on to the next student," she told the Pinellas County school board.

More students for virtual classes?
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It's common for virtual schools to have larger class sizes than in-person school. The National Education Policy Center reported in 2019 that virtual schools had an average student-teacher ratio of 44 students to one teacher, while the average for in-person public schools was 16 students to a teacher.

The report recommended that virtual schools reduce student-to-teacher ratios, finding virtual school students often performed poorly academically.

Sirko said it was difficult to anticipate how many of her Colorado district's 22,000 students would opt for the virtual option over in-person. About 3,000 students ended up online at the beginning of the school year. About 1,000 said they preferred online in a survey the district distributed over the summer, she said.

Elementary teachers were in charge of as many as 75 students, Sirko said. The district is working to bring that number down, but hiring teachers to fill open spots is a challenge.

Colorado schools struggled to find qualified teachers even before the pandemic, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

"It's just hard to find applicants," Sirko said. "And even more difficult when you're in rural Colorado, even though we're a fairly large town."

Many teachers lead virtual classes that are more or less the same size as in previous years.

Some educators experience the opposite problem: small online classes because students are missing.

Some days, fewer than 10 students show up for teacher Juli Caruso's virtual eighth grade science class at Star Spencer Mid-High School in Oklahoma City, where everyone is learning remotely through the first quarter. It's not the same small group of students every day, Caruso said.

Adapting to new technology eats into everyone's learning time, she said.

"It's a work in progress," Caruso said. "But right now, it's slow-going."

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A class of 100? COVID-19 plans overwhelm some teachers with huge virtual classes

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PHOENIX - Family members were at high risk of COVID-19, so Norma Hernandez said she had no choice but to keep her three kids at home for the school year, rather than send them to school in person. It's a decision most parents have had to contemplate this year, but the virtual option comes with worrisome trade-offs.

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Change in Teacher Parent Relationships Create Hostility

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Change in Teacher Parent Relationships Create Hostility

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Parent teacher relationships suffer as teacher and parent worlds collide. Parents are unimpressed, confrontational and combative with quality of teaching. Teachers are complaining that parents make their job more difficult and interrupt during class. “I feel more monitored now than I did when we were in class.”

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Renee Enyart, 28, was across the room from her sixth-grader when it happened. She glanced over and saw her daughter Emi, who was virtually attending science class at their home in Winter Haven, Florida, reaching for her laptop's power cable. Suddenly, a sharp voice rang out from the speakers. "It was just an instant scolding: 'I told you to look at the screen. You know what you're supposed to be doing. I shouldn't have to tell you guys,'" Enyart recalled.

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Distance learning is straining parent-teacher relationships | News Break

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Renee Enyart, 28, was across the room from her sixth-grader when it happened. She glanced over and saw her daughter Emi, who was virtually attending science class at their home in Winter Haven, Florida, reaching for her laptop's power cable. Suddenly, a sharp voice rang out from the speakers.

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Reddit Conversations between Teachers about Parents

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Reddit Conversations between Teachers about Parents

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"I really wish I could tell the parents off. Your child is in school right now. They can do chores later. I'm sure the dishes will be fine until the lesson is over!"

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It's like, they know there's school. There's so much effort done to assist their children's education virtually, offer tutoring in-between short breaks, scaffolding their content to ensure mastery even away from the physical classroom.

It all goes away when 45 minutes of a 55 minute class session is spent with the camera facing the ceiling, kid washing dishes or taking out the trash, or cleaning their room. Suddenly it's a lot less rewarding to actually teach that lesson, knowing you're a mere option.

I've had kids login for attendance and then private message me on Zoom saying "I have to go, my mom wants me to go to the store with her." We cannot mark them absent for the purposes of documentation, we can only mark the student tardy at most at my school. Any attempt to explain to the parent is met with blowback about how hard it is. And the thing is, it is hard for parents, so I can empathize. But at least give your scholars the morning to enrich themselves.

/rant.

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Parents who make their kids leave their computers idle to go do chores...

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It's like, they know there's school. There's so much effort done to assist their children's education virtually, offer tutoring in-between short breaks, scaffolding their content to ensure mastery even away from the physical classroom.

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Teachers Don't Want to Return until It's Safe

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Teachers Don't Want to Return until It's Safe

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Tucson, AZ-Tucson Unified School District continues online only classes and 70% of teachers have concerns about in-person classes and are signing petitions to protest returning to class.

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TUSD is delaying opening schools for in-person instruction until at least Jan. 4 due to COVID-19 numbers increasing.

Coronavirus cases are on the rise and the community has to be more cautious, said Tucson Unified governing board member Adelita Grijalva, citing the most recent Pima County Health Department update on Nov. 4.

Pima County Health Director Dr. Theresa Cullen said in the update that, based on data from the end of October, the community is likely now experiencing significant transmission of COVID-19 and that people should avoid crowded, close and confined areas.

The Pima County Health Department leadership team informed TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo that the county will be in a state of widespread community transmission of COVID-19 by Nov. 12, the planned opening.

"Out of an abundance of caution, our leadership team has made a commitment to only initiate hybrid instruction when Pima County is in a state of moderate transmission or better," Trujillo said in a statement.

The remote instruction model will stay the same as it has been, and the district will continue to have on-campus learning spaces for children who need it, including remote instruction and basic campus services for students who attend.

Families who choose hybrid will be prioritized for hybrid learning once it begins.

"Our cases have been rising incrementally every day," Grijalva said. "And so if the pattern continues, it just seems to me it's irresponsible of the district to open up classes in an environment where we are basically at the same place as we were in May when we weren't allowed to have graduation ceremonies because of the risk of spread."

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TUSD delays opening schools until January as COVID-19 cases rise

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TUSD is delaying opening schools for in-person instruction until at least Jan. 4 due to COVID-19 numbers increasing. Coronavirus cases are on the rise and the community has to be more cautious, said Tucson Unified governing board member Adelita Grijalva, citing the most recent Pima County Health Department update on Nov.

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Distance Learning a Gut Punch for Low Income Students!

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Distance Learning a Gut Punch for Low Income Students!

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Low income students disproportionately impacted and lack required technology. Over half the students not logging in. Summer school might be necessary or students held back a grade. Creates implications for years. Affluent schools show 98% attendance rates.

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Daniel Gonzalez Rosas, 17, outside of his shuttered school, the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies in Los Angeles County. Daniel said that only about half of his classmates join video conference calls for class. "Most are under the impression that school is optional given the circumstances we are in," he said. Credit... David Walter Banks for The New York Times

Teachers at some schools across the country report that fewer than half of their students are participating in online learning.

Daniel Gonzalez Rosas, 17, outside of his shuttered school, the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies in Los Angeles County. Daniel said that only about half of his classmates join video conference calls for class. "Most are under the impression that school is optional given the circumstances we are in," he said. Credit... David Walter Banks for The New York Times

Chronic absenteeism is a problem in American education during the best of times, but now, with the vast majority of the nation's school buildings closed and lessons being conducted remotely, more students than ever are missing class - not logging on, not checking in or not completing assignments.

The absence rate appears particularly high in schools with many low-income students, whose access to home computers and internet connections can be spotty. Some teachers report that fewer than half of their students are regularly participating.

The trend is leading to widespread concern among educators, with talk of a potential need for summer sessions, an early start in the fall, or perhaps having some or even all students repeat a grade once Americans are able to return to classrooms.

Students are struggling to connect in districts large and small. Los Angeles said last week that about a third of its high school students were not logging in for classes. And there are daunting challenges for rural communities like Minford, Ohio, where many students live in remote wooded areas unserved by internet providers.

Educators say that some students and their parents have dropped out of touch with schools completely - unavailable by phone, email or any other form of communication - as families struggle with the broader economic and health effects of the coronavirus outbreak.

Even before the outbreak, chronic absenteeism was a problem in many schools, especially those with a lot of low-income students. Many obstacles can prevent children who live in poverty from making it to class: a parent's broken-down car or a teenager's need to babysit siblings, for example. But online learning presents new obstacles, particularly with uneven levels of technology and adult supervision.

Titilayo Aluko, 18, a junior at Landmark High School in Manhattan, is one of the students trying hard to keep up with her classes who has been thwarted by her lack of access to technology. She has a district-issued laptop, but no Wi-Fi network in her Bronx apartment since her family had trouble paying the monthly bill.

For classes like statistics and neuroscience, Ms. Aluko has tried to complete assignments and participate in video conferences using her cellphone, but that is sometimes impossible.

"I actually need my teachers, who know me and understand me, to help me, and I don't have that," she said. "I just keep thinking, 'Oh, my God, I might not pass.' I'm just really scared for the future."

Cratering attendance in some districts contrasts with reports from several selective or affluent schools where close to 100 percent of students are participating in online learning. The dramatic split promises to further deepen the typical academic achievement gaps between poor, middle-class and wealthy students.

The scale of the challenge, and the work that will need to be done to catch children up academically and socially, is "huge," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a network of urban education systems.

He called the prospect of "unfinished learning" from this time "a serious issue that could have implications for years."

There is no precedent in educators' memories for what is happening right now. Schools have weathered disruptive events like Hurricane Katrina and the California wildfires, but those disasters were limited to shorter time periods and smaller regions. During the coronavirus pandemic, every state in the country has ordered or recommended closing schools, in many cases through the end of the academic year.

School leaders across the country are already debating how to help students catch up. To maintain social distancing, some regions may bring children back to school in waves, in order to reduce the number of people inside classrooms and buildings at any given time.

There is also concern about whether large numbers of students will need to repeat all or substantial portions of their current grade.

"Many skills build one on another," Mr. Casserly said. "If a child misses out on some key idea, then all of a sudden, additional ideas as they're introduced just become Greek. Will we need some kind of beginning of the year diagnostics to try and figure out just where the kids are, how much they have lost?"

For many students, it seems most likely that the answer will be: Yes, quite a lot.

In the Cleveland Metropolitan School District last week, teachers returning from an extended spring break tried to hold virtual parent-teacher conferences for the first time for all of the district's 38,000 students. Initially, they were able to reach only 60 percent of families, but after a few more days of trying, the number reached 87 percent, said Eric S. Gordon, the district's chief executive.

The city of Cleveland has one of the nation's highest child-poverty rates. Despite the economic slowdown, many parents continue to work full-time outside their homes in fields like sanitation, health and food service, meaning that many students do not have an adult at home to supervise their learning.

Mr. Gordon estimated that 30 to 40 percent of the district's students also do not have reliable access to the internet at home. So in addition to developing plans for online learning, the district has distributed printed work packets along with free meals, and will soon begin mailing those packets to students' home addresses.

Tracy Radich, a fourth-grade teacher at the Joseph M. Gallagher School in Cleveland, spent Tuesday and Wednesday going down her roster of 20 students, trying to call each student's parents and make individual plans to help each of them learn from home.

Some of her students' families speak Somali, Swahili or Spanish, so she asked colleagues who speak those languages to help.

So far, only three of her students have been consistently engaged with online lessons, she said. About six do not have regular access to the internet. One boy typically goes to the library to get online, but the city's libraries are now closed, too. She expects to interact with several students mostly through phone calls.

"We are going to come together and meet everybody where they are," Ms. Radich said.

School funding is typically tied to student enrollment or attendance counts across the country, but Ohio has unlinked funding from those counts, a policy that education experts expect most states to adopt in the coming weeks.

In rural Minford, a town of about 700 in southern Ohio near the border with Kentucky, the district is distributing laptops as well as work packets on paper to students without internet or technology access, estimated at 25 to 30 percent of the student body by the district's superintendent.

Regardless of whether Minford's students can participate in online classes or turn in work, administrators expect to promote a majority of them to the next grade, said Marin Applegate, the district's school psychologist. "We do not feel they are in control and cannot be held accountable," she said.

Some school systems, like the District of Columbia Public Schools, have stopped taking formal attendance altogether. The nation's largest school district, New York City, which is at the center of the coronavirus crisis, has not yet released data on the number of children participating in online learning. The district said it would officially begin tracking remote attendance on Monday.

In Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, about 13 percent of high school students have had no online contact with teachers since schools closed three weeks ago, and one-third are not regularly participating in online learning, according to the superintendent, Austin Beutner.

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Heber Marquez, a high school English teacher at the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies in Los Angeles County, estimated that just 45 percent of his students were showing up to Zoom classroom meetings. Credit... David Walter Banks for The New York Times

Heber Marquez, a high school English teacher at the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies in Los Angeles County, estimated that just 45 percent of his students were showing up to Zoom classroom meetings.

"A lot of our students have siblings they have to take care of, and their parents are still going out and working," Mr. Marquez said. "It makes it very difficult to log on at the same time as feeding breakfast to their siblings or helping with chores."

Many schools are making efforts to distribute digital devices to students who do not have their own at home. Los Angeles is trying to get them to more than 100,000 students, Mr. Beutner said. The Miami-Dade County Public Schools have distributed more than 80,000 mobile devices for distance learning, and more than 11,000 smartphones to serve as home Wi-Fi hot spots, according to a spokeswoman.

In New York, the city's typical inequalities are reflected in the wide range of participation levels in remote learning.

At Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the city's most competitive, Serge Avery, a social studies teacher, said 98 percent of his students have been participating in daily online activities, like reading and responding to a Financial Times article about the coronavirus.

His freshman global history students are currently studying the Middle Ages, and he has considered doing a unit on the bubonic plague. But he thought twice after receiving a heartfelt email from a student, written at 4 a.m., in which she described her mother being taken away by ambulance with Covid-19 symptoms.

Mr. Avery said he worried that even among his high-achieving students, participation could drop off as online learning becomes more of a daily grind for restless teenagers.

"Teachers really get energized by the classroom," he said. The current limitations, he added, have left both teachers and students "slightly depressed."

Dan Levin and Audra D.S. Burch contributed reporting.

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As School Moves Online, Many Students Stay Logged Out (Published 2020)

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Teachers at some schools across the country report that fewer than half of their students are participating in online learning. Daniel Gonzalez Rosas, 17, outside of his shuttered school, the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies in Los Angeles County. Daniel said that only about half of his classmates join video conference calls for class.

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Digital Divide Creates Permanent Threat to Student's Futures

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Digital Divide Creates Permanent Threat to Student's Futures

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California sees D's and F's doubling and mostly in low income communities. "Grading students right now is essentially grading their home resources" Graduation and college admissions threatened as students lose interest in their education.

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Grades of D and F have increased in the Los Angeles Unified School District among middle and high school students in a troubling sign of the toll that distance learning - and the coronavirus crisis - is taking on children, especially those who are members of low-income families.

The drop in grades, which also is affecting other school systems, was disclosed Monday when L.A. Unified released a chart based on 10-week interim assessments. Poor grades surged in the district's lower-income communities, which also is where student attendance rates are lower and where the COVID-19 pandemic has hit especially hard.

"The attendance figures and interim assessments don't reflect the desire or capability of students," said L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner in remarks broadcast Monday. "They're eager to learn and every bit as capable as they were before school facilities closed. But the struggle to cope with COVID-19 and online learning for children and their families is very real."

The data on grades made another announcement all the more painful, even though school board leaders foreshadowed it last week: Campuses will not reopen for most students before January, the superintendent said. And even that timing could prove doubtful, Beutner said, unless the coronavirus pandemic subsides and unless state and local agencies offer more guidance and resources.

The drop in grades suggests that "traditional ways of measuring learning need rethinking," said Janelle Scott, a professor in the Graduate School of Education and African American Studies department at UC Berkeley. "Grading students right now is essentially grading their home resources, which includes not only the physical structure and availability of a space to 'do' school, but also adults who can support and supplement remote offerings."

Thedropping grades provide more evidence about the pandemic's harm to education, said Elisha Smith Arrillaga, executive director of Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based research and advocacy group.

"This significantly complicates high school graduation, college and career preparation, and college admissions," she said. "California's students will be experiencing the impact of COVID-19 for years to come."

Teresa Rodríguez's son, Iván, a ninth-grader at Bell High School, has never brought home a failing grade, but so far, he's got an F in theater. His other grades are better, but Rodríguez worries about his academic malaise.

"There are days when he tells me he doesn't even want to log on," she said. "I force him, of course. But it's all very negative. And he's always taking bathroom breaks."

She worries about his changed attitude toward learning and, down the road, about college.

"He was so excited to graduate from middle school," Rodríguez said. "He was looking forward to walking by himself to school, making new friends, having a new pace of life. And he lost all of that."

Rodríguez understands there are no easy answers - and, even if she could, she's not sure she's ready to send her children back to campus because of family health issues.

The grades of Keyla Quijas, a seventh-grader at the Maywood Center for Enriched Studies, have slipped from A's and Bs to Cs, Ds and Fs, said her mother, Norma Quijas.

"I've talked to her about her grades, and she said, 'Mom, it's not the same thing to be at home as at school,'" said her mother. "I feel she's not learning at all. It's stressful for me. I sit there with her. I know teachers are trying their best, but it's not the same thing."

Quijas also has a daughter in third grade: "They lose interest after a couple of hours of sitting down at the computer."

Declining grades also have surfaced in Carlsbad Unified, a San Diego County school system that has less than a third as many students living in poverty as L.A. Unified. The percentage of Ds and Fs in Carlsbad has more than doubled, rising to 14.3%, said Supt. Benjamin Churchill.

Similar surges in failing grades are being reported among school systems in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Unlike some school systems, L.A.did not release the numbers behind the year-to-year increases in Ds and Fs.

For all districts, the 10-week report serves as an early warning system that teachers and district officials are using to target assistance for struggling students.

Beutner announced on Monday that L.A. Unified is expanding from one-on-one in-person tutoring to groups of up to three - to reach more students. All participants, including teachers, will have to take a coronavirus test, even if they've had one recently. This gradual growth of in-person services is expected to reach several thousand of the district's 460,000 K-12 students. Health authorities allow in-person services to students with special needs, up to 25% of enrollment.

The district also will be speeding up the in-person assessment of students with special needs and will allow sports teams to begin conditioning work - outside with physical distancing and no team drills. These expanded activities arise from new agreements with United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents teachers, nurses, counselors and librarians.

The next two months need to be spent in an all-out effort to get ready for a hoped-for January opening, Beutner said

As part of that effort, L.A. Unified joined six other large California school districts Monday in calling on state and local officials to develop " a common standard of health, education and employee practices so schools have a clear path to open in the safest way."

The districts called for "regular surveillance testing" for the virus among students and staff at no cost to participants or school districts. They also called for plans to help employees who would be at risk by returning to campus or who would put a family member at risk by doing so.

State legislators expressed overlapping concerns in a Monday letter to Mark Ghaly, the secretary for the state Health & Human Services Agency.

State officials last week could not tell the Assembly education committee which California schools have reopened or have had outbreaks of COVID-19 - let alone factors that would have contributed to an infection in a school community.

Such data should be collected and analyzed, said Assemblyman Patrick O'Donnell (D-Long Beach), who cosigned the letter.

Beutner called the failure to collect such data "reckless" and pointed to ongoing efforts by L.A. Unified to tally and post its own testing data.

A report from the state's legislative analyst said various state and county agencies are providing sometimes conflicting guidance to schools on how best to keep campuses safe.

State COVID rules stipulate that Los Angeles County cannot open public and private K-12 campuses to all students because coronavirus infection rates are too high, with the county in the state's most restrictive purple Tier 1. In contrast, campuses in Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties, where infection ratesare lower,are clear to open.

Campuses in San Bernardino County cannot open. In Riverside County, campuses also must remain closed unless they were able to open before a recent spike of COVID cases in that county.

"First things first," said Beutner. "The overall level of COVID in this community has to be at a safer level... There's nobody more frustrated by this than I."

The situation with student grades embodies this frustration.

"It's not their fault, their families' fault or the teacher's fault," he added.

In the spring, L.A. Unified joined some other California districts in giving students a passing grade in all classes. And no grade was lowered after campuses shut down on March 13. Since then, L.A. Unified has worked to make online learning universally accessible, to provide a consistent course schedule and to create more engaging online lessons. L.A. teachers have taken multiple training sessions in online instruction, while also modifying lesson plans and courses.

And grading has resumed.

"Extraordinary things are happening in classrooms," Beutner said. "But the simple fact is some students are struggling online."

Even some significant accomplishments have been tempered by reality. The district's universal access efforts - making computers and internet hot spots available to all students - have been undermined by pockets of inadequate Wi-Fi reception across the county, especially in lower-income areas.

In the "highest-needs communities," Beutner said in the interview, "the struggle is more difficult. He noted that the Wi-Fi signal "may not be as strong in parts of the communities as in others."

Beutner said he spoke with a dedicated and "heartbroken" middle school teacher who talked about students who are late to class, who turn off screens during a Zoom class, who don't turn in assignments and of families that don't return calls.

"He knows most of these students would be doing better in a classroom at school with the structure it provides, the comfort of friends and the focus and routine of his teaching," Beutner said.

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Ds and Fs surge, attendance slips among L.A.'s poorest students amid distance learning

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Grades of D and F have increased in the Los Angeles Unified School District among middle and high school students in a troubling sign of the toll that distance learning - and the coronavirus crisis - is taking on children, especially those who are members of low-income families.

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Rural communities hard-hit by lack of Internet, as millions of US children cut off from digital learning. In Robeson County, N.C. 43% have no Internet. Students says: “I don’t think just the people who live in the city should have internet." School buses turned into Internet hotspots as students study in their cars.

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Millions of American students lack reliable internet access. Some are learning in parking lots connected to Wi-Fi buses or crashing with relatives to get online.

Shekinah Lennon, 17, at right, and her sister, Orlandria, 14, connect to classes from their kitchen in Orrum, N.C., a rural community of fewer than 100 people. Credit... Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

Shekinah and Orlandria Lennon were sitting at their kitchen table this fall, taking online classes, when video of their teachers and fellow students suddenly froze on their laptop screens. The wireless antenna on the roof had stopped working, and it could not be fixed.

Desperate for a solution, their mother called five broadband companies, trying to get connections for their home in Orrum, N.C., a rural community of fewer than 100 people with no grocery store or traffic lights.

All the companies gave the same answer: Service is not available in your area.

The response is the same across broad stretches of Robeson County, N.C., a swath of small towns and rural places like Orrum dotted among soybean fields and hog farms on the South Carolina border. About 20,000 of the county's homes, or 43 percent of all households, have no internet connection.

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A park ranger installed a sign indicating that Wi-Fi was available at Lumber River State Park in Orrum. Credit... Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

The technology gap has prompted teachers to upload lessons on flash drives and send them home to dozens of students every other week. Some children spend school nights crashing at more-connected relatives' homes so they can get online for classes the next day.

"It's not fair," said Shekinah, 17, who, after weeks trying to stay connected to classes through her cellphone, was finally able to get online regularly again last month through a Wi-Fi hot spot provided by the school. "I don't think just the people who live in the city should have internet. We need it in the country, too."

Millions of American students are grappling with the same challenges, learning remotely without adequate home internet service. Even as school districts like the one in Robeson County have scrambled to provide students with laptops, many who live in low-income and rural communities continue to have difficulty logging on.

About 15 million K-12 students lived in households without adequate online connectivity in 2018, according to a study of federal data by Common Sense Media, an education nonprofit group that tracks children's media use.

Before the coronavirus, that was mainly an obstacle for students doing homework, and it was an issue that state and federal officials struggled to address. But the pandemic turned the lack of internet connectivity into a nationwide emergency: Suddenly, millions of schoolchildren were cut off from digital learning, unable to maintain virtual "attendance" and marooned socially from their classmates.

The Trump administration has done little to expand broadband access for students, both before and during the pandemic, said James P. Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media. "There was no federal strategy, and it was left to the individual states to come up with a patchwork of solutions," he said.

When Congress passed a coronavirus relief package in March, it provided billions of dollars for emergency education needs, but none specifically for closing the digital divide. Despite advocacy from groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Steyer said, Republican leaders in Congress blocked efforts to add such funds.

"The tragedy is this is not a Democratic or Republican problem," Mr. Steyer said. "It is simply not fair that a poor family in a rural area or a low-income urban area does not have the resources to send their kids to school in this pandemic."

Desperate for workarounds, schools across the country have scrambled to distribute mobile hot spots and internet-equipped iPads. Districts everywhere from Wisconsin to Kansas to Alabama have transformed idle school buses into roving Wi-Fi vehicles that park in neighborhoods so students can sit nearby and log in to classes.

A Wi-Fi bus allowing students to connect to the internet in Lumberton, N.C., in Robeson County. Credit... Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

Calob Kerns, 13, doing schoolwork in a Lumberton parking lot while connected to the bus's Wi-Fi. Credit... Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

In Baltimore, where a recent study found that nearly 20,000 households with school-age children lacked broadband internet or computers, the public school system is providing internet connectivity to an estimated 44,000 students, or 55 percent of the district's total enrollment, officials said.

The challenge of closing the digital divide can be particularly daunting in states like North Carolina, home to the nation's second-largest rural population and a geography that spans mountains, swamps and barrier islands.

About 100,000 of the state's 1.5 million K-12 students were unable to connect to online services in August, according to the Department of Information Technology. More than 75,300 cellular hot spots were provided to schools by late October, and the state is trying to connect other students with public Wi-Fi locations and community grants for broadband infrastructure.

But politics has also hampered the state's connectivity. In 2016, Republican state lawmakers won a legal battle to halt the spread of municipal broadband providers, which had increased competition by serving residents where commercial networks had been unwilling to go.

In Orange County, which is home to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and just west of some of the state's biggest cities, more than 5,200 households lack broadband internet access, including an estimated 1,100 students in the local school district, said Monique Felder, the superintendent.

She noted with frustration that the district is just a few miles away from the state's prominent Research Triangle Park, where IBM, Cisco and dozens of other information technology companies employ thousands of people.

"It's un-American," said Ms. Felder, who pointed to unaffordable pricing and a lack of cell towers as having contributed to the problem. "I can't wrap my head around the fact that we live in a place where you have all this technology, yet we have families who can't access the internet in the comfort of their home."

In September, the district's school board voted to continue with remote learning for most students through the end of the semester, citing health concerns, despite Ms. Felder's recommendation to hold a combination of in-person and online classes.

To help students connect, the district has distributed over 1,500 hot spots, often several to each family. Yellow buses outfitted with Wi-Fi regularly rumble outside apartment complexes and housing developments. And for weeks, shuttered school cafeterias, once redolent with the scent of chicken nuggets and quesadillas, functioned as internet hubs.

But with no child care provided, few parents brought their children, prompting the district to close them last month.

Today, many parents use a map of public Wi-Fi locations to help their children get online, and students can often be seen hunched over laptops in cars parked within the invisible range of wireless routers. "It just adds insult to injury when you're forced to sit in a McDonald's parking lot to learn," Ms. Felder said.

For months, Ms. Felder and other local officials have been lobbying the state for systemic solutions, rather than Band-Aid fixes like hot spots. "We need cell towers and broadband," she said. "That's something we cannot build ourselves. We need the government to step in and make this happen."

The strain is even more profound a two hours' drive south in Robeson County, where coronavirus test positivity rates have consistently been more than double the state's 5 percent benchmark for reopening, leading the school board to extend remote learning through December, a district spokesman said.

Sherry Park, the principal of South Robeson Intermediate School, said about 60 of her 310 students live in cell service "dead zones." Every two weeks, their parents come to the school to exchange drives filled with completed schoolwork for new ones, uploaded with lesson videos and assignments.

Sharon Hunt works 12- to 14-hour days teaching eighth-grade math at the school. In a voice frayed by exhaustion, she described a grueling schedule: teaching online in an empty classroom from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., after which she returns home to spend several more hours compiling flash drive presentations before grading assignments.

Most of her students live in rural areas, and half of the students in one of her classes have no internet access. One family has to walk to the nearest crossroad to get cellphone reception. Ms. Hunt said she tried to answer their questions over the phone, but both teacher and students know it is not the same.

"You can tell in their voice that they're struggling, but once we've kind of talked through some things, they sound better," she said. "That's all I have to go on until I get their work."

The lack of internet access has reshaped the home lives of some students. Clarissa Breedan, an unemployed cosmetologist, lives with her parents and two children in a double-wide trailer home outside the small town of Roland. This fall, her four nieces have also stayed there during the week so they can get online for classes, only going home to their parents on weekends.

Some of the girls sleep in reclining chairs because there are not enough beds. "We have to do what we have to do," Ms. Breedan said.

Josie Hunt lives on the outskirts of Roland; the only internet access there is via satellite for $140 per month. But she canceled her subscription in September after a barrage of extra charges incurred from remote classes made the service unaffordable. And a broadband provider said laying a cable to her home would cost $12,000.

"I'd rather not ever have internet if I have to pay that much," said Ms. Hunt, who is disabled and whose husband works odd jobs.

Without it, her son Nehemiah, 14, has been forced to rely on flash drives to do his school work, with devastating results. "In school I made all A's and B's," he said. "Now I'm failing."

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In Rural 'Dead Zones,' School Comes on a Flash Drive

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Millions of American students lack reliable internet access. Some are learning in parking lots connected to Wi-Fi buses or crashing with relatives to get online. Shekinah and Orlandria Lennon were sitting at their kitchen table this fall, taking online classes, when video of their teachers and fellow students suddenly froze on their laptop screens.

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District Doesn’t have Face-to-face Classes for Special Ed

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District Doesn’t have Face-to-face Classes for Special Ed

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Tampa Bay, FL Special Ed can’t be addressed over the internet. Parents now gather together in the living room but they aren’t teachers & have been told to be patient. “We are barely hanging on by a thread.”

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Stories about the coronavirus pandemic are free to read as a public service at tampabay.com/coronavirus. If this coverage is important to you, consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Tampa Bay Times at tampabay.com/subscribe.
* * *

Tracie McHugh has tried everything to make remote learning work for her two boys. But their house isn't a classroom and she's not a teacher.

Before the coronavirus pandemic forced Florida schools to close, André, 6, and Gavin, 8, would pop out of bed to start the day. That changed when home and school became the same place, and now it's a miracle if any work gets done.

André has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which he usually gets therapy for at his Manatee County school. Gavin is on the autism spectrum, and the change in routine has them both "totally out of sorts," McHugh said.

The brothers are among tens of thousands of special-needs students across Tampa Bay who, because of the virus, are missing out on services and accommodations that made learning work for them. Schools are trying to keep up, officials say, but some things can't be replicated remotely.

The switch has disrupted progress some children have made in coping with their disabilities, parents and guardians say. Gavin, for example, is also diagnosed with a feeding disorder, and without therapy he's regressed to eating only three foods since schools closed.

Some parents worry they'll have to keep their kids from moving to the next grade. Others have watched their children have violent meltdowns and are putting off school work just to get through the day without a fight.

"My stomach has been in knots all day," Laura McCrary wrote to the Tampa Bay Times after helping her son, a 16-year-old Pinellas County student with autism. "We are barely hanging on by a thread."

André McHugh, left, and his brother, Gavin McHugh, work on school assignments from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Both are special-needs students in Manatee County schools. [Courtesy of Tracie McHugh]

About 15,000 students in Pinellas are considered special-needs, according to Lynne Mowatt, head of social services for the school district. Satisfying their federally mandated individualized education plans, called IEPs, is a challenge when teachers can't be face-to-face, she said.

Some students, for example, are non-verbal, so they can't speak directly with their teachers. Others have extreme behavior issues that specialists can't address over the internet, so "reasonableness" is key as teachers work to meet requirements laid out in students' plans, Mowatt said.

Districts nationwide are awaiting direction from U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who is considering waiving those requirements, according to the New York Times. The country's $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, signed last week by President Donald Trump, allows her to ask Congress to waive parts of special education law.

In the meantime, Pasco County special-needs teachers have been told to be patient and work to understand and support each student's specific situation, said Trinity Oaks teacher Staci Guten. She's been in regular contact with guardians for all 15 of her students to address their concerns and needs. There are about 12,500 special-needs students across the district.

"It's constant communication," said Guten, 38. "Hundreds of emails, hundreds of text messages, hundreds of phone calls ... We're in so much contact with parents."

Special-needs teacher Staci Guten. [Courtesy of Staci Guten]

She teaches kids with varying hurdles: autism, learning disabilities, language impairment, vision issues and more. All of them were highly dependent to begin with, and the added stresses of isolation from friends and learning a new computer program could be enough to derail a student mentally or emotionally, she said.

Katie Hawks, another Pasco special-needs teacher, said she's tried to focus on helping families create routines for students that might give them back a sense of normalcy. "We need to look at their social and emotional needs and balance that with learning," she said.

In Hernando County, where about 3,900 students are special-needs, Carla Johns has four kids that usually attend Pinegrove Elementary. Now, they gather together in the living room to learn on computers.

Her oldest, Hunter, is on the autism spectrum and suffers from a slew of behavioral disorders. "I don't want to do school," the 12-year-old told her on the first day of remote learning. "It's not my fault there's a coronavirus."

He had been making progress in his special-needs classroom, and finally was transitioning to regular fifth-grade classes just before the virus broke out. Now, like many other students, he no longer has the structure that was helping him succeed.

"We were trying to get him mainstreamed before middle school," Johns said. "He was thriving ... and now I am petrified that he will not make it into sixth grade because he is not going to get what he needs."

Hunter, Austin, Logan and Aaliyah Johns pose for a photo outside their home during a break from remote schoolwork. Hunter, 12, is a special-needs student at Pine Grove Elementary in Hernando County. [Courtesy of Carla Johns]

Susan Mason, a parent of a special-needs student in Hillsborough County, said her son's accommodations simply can't be delivered online. School closures have put him at an increased disadvantage when compared to general education students in the county, which has more than 34,000 special-needs students.

He went from receiving significant support at school to being on his own at home, in a "highly distractible mode of learning," Mason said. "Our choice is to make it work or he won't go on to the ninth grade."

Mandy Minor, a parent in Pinellas, said she is grateful her 8-year-old daughter, Clara, has access to some school work to keep her learning while campuses are closed. But without peers and a teacher to propel her through the day, the first-grader, who suffers learning and developmental delays due to DiGeorge Syndrome, gets burned out quickly.

"I imagine, cumulatively, this will have a negative effect on her," Minor said. "I feel bad for the teachers, because they're trying really hard. ... But I don't know how you can effectively be a teacher to 20 or 30 kids when you don't even get to see them."

Charlene Grecsek, executive director of SEDNET, a multiagency network for students with emotional and behavioral disabilities, held a webinar Thursday about remote learning for families of special-needs children. More than 400 people tuned in.

She urged parents to breathe and "know you're doing the very best you can." She told them to "understand the impact of the change" caused by the coronavirus. Take breaks, move around, she said, and reward children for their progress.

"Ask them what is best for them," Grecsek said. "Find what works."

For McHugh, the mother of two in Manatee, that has meant taking the boys on morning walks, setting up a dedicated schooling space and crafting a visual schedule with movable tasks to make the day more structured and fun.

Tracie McHugh, a mother of two special-needs students in Manatee County schools, made a visual schedule with movable tasks to make learning from home more structured and fun. [Courtesy of Tracie McHugh]

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Johns, the mother in Hernando, says she's buying an inflatable slide to reward her kids and get them out of the house. She and other parents say they refuse to push their kids past their limits.

"You just gotta do what you have to do in order to get through the day," said McCrary, another Pinellas mom. "We will put mental health above online learning. We have no choice."

* * *

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Why online learning is hard on students with special needs

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Stories about the coronavirus pandemic are free to read as a public service at tampabay.com/coronavirus . If this coverage is important to you, consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Tampa Bay Times at tampabay.com/subscribe. * * * Tracie McHugh has tried everything to make remote learning work for her two boys.

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Parents Can't Cope with Impact of Virtual Learning on Their Special Child

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Parents Can't Cope with Impact of Virtual Learning on Their Special Child

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"I feel like a failure", "A lot of things are sliding", "Not getting highly specific supports." Expert recommends: "Track your child's regression."

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The challenge of distance learning for parents of children with special needs

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District Keeps in- Person Classes Open for Special Ed

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District Keeps in- Person Classes Open for Special Ed

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Janesville, WI keeps schools open for exceptional children even during pandemic and mother's fears  are addressed. She is relieved.

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For Elijah Buroker, a soon-to-be 5-year-old from Janesville, the closure of schools in spring proved to be a major setback.

Elijah has autism and doesn't talk. He also struggles with two rare congenital disorders and vision problems because his left optic nerve never fully formed.

His mother, Renae Bliss, said Elijah was making good progress in the Janesville School District's early childhood program at Jefferson Elementary School. Then the pandemic forced the city's schools to close.

Bliss called what happened next a "serious six months of regression."

"The frustrating part was because he was getting a full year last year of his speech, occupational, physical and vision therapy, he was starting to make a lot of progress," she said. "He was starting to sign; his confidence and his willingness to kind of mix and mingle and play with other kids was increasing.

"Then when spring hit and everything closed down, he was left with nothing."

Bliss said her son was not given any educational materials to continue learning, and she felt as if special-needs students had been forgotten. She tuned in to the children's TV show "Blue's Clues" and tried to teach Elijah using the methods she knew, but she said it was difficult because she isn't a trained teacher.

Her oldest son, Jalen, also needs additional help. He struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism.

Until a week ago, Jalen was going to Craig High School. He now attends Rock River Charter School, a Janesville charter school, because it has a more consistent schedule and continues to offer in-person learning.

Jalen completes online lessons with in-person help from teachers at the school.

Kim Peerenboom, the district's director of pupil services, told The Gazette earlier this month that the district has made changes to special education this year for the roughly 1,200 students in the program.

"We have had to make some programming changes for students who are medically fragile and/or if they are living with a family member who was medically fragile to ensure that their education continues," she said.

"Obviously face-to-face cannot be replicated through a distance-learning model, so the level of service sometimes looks a little different, especially depending on the severity of the needs of the student, but we've been handling all of those on an individual basis."

To teach special-education students about masks and social distancing, teachers use reminders, nonverbal queues and stories to help children understand the new rules under COVID-19, Peerenboom said.

No special-education student has been punished for not wearing a mask. Some students are choosing face shields as a more comfortable option.

Peerenboom said a reduction in face-to-face services has been the top concern for parents of students with special needs. She said district officials have worked with families on ways that students can still come to school buildings and get help if distance learning is not an option.

Bliss spoke about her concerns at the Oct. 13 school board meeting. She asked that special-education students be allowed to continue reporting to school even if a building closes and that they have educational plans in place to keep them from falling behind.

"I am absolutely terrified" of another closure, she told The Gazette after the meeting.

Bliss said she has heard from Milwaukee parents that children in special education are struggling with the district's virtual learning setup. When schools close, a lot of clinics that offer speech and occupational therapy close, too, she said.

"They can't watch a video," Bliss said, referring to special-needs students. "They can't do a webinar. A lot of parents are having to work from home, but we're not certified physical therapists, even though we're special-needs parents.

"So I look at it not just for myself and seeing Elijah's progress and his confidence that has grown. It's not even so much about his progress, it's his confidence in trying different things and wanting to interact with the other kids and things like that. That also regresses when the schools close."

Jefferson Elementary School's announcement that it would switch to virtual learning Oct. 21 through the end of the month exacerbated Bliss' fears.

However, last Friday, she got word from Jefferson's special education staff that Elijah could continue to receive therapy and learn at school even if the buildings are closed because of COVID-19 staffing problems.

Bliss felt relieved and grateful.

"He's not potty trained or anything like that," she said. "He's behind on literally everything, so this year has been nice because ... he's making decent progress just six weeks into the school year.

"I was relieved because if the teachers go, he can go, but it's also as a parent a great feeling to know that somebody heard me and my concerns and he can receive the help he needs," Bliss said.

She also learned Elijah soon will be moved from the early childhood program to P4J, the district's 4-year-old kindergarten program. That likely means he'll learn in person with more children when Jefferson reopens.

Elijah is exempt from the mask mandate. He did not wear a mask in his old classroom because he and another student could socially distance themselves, and his disability makes it difficult for him to wear one anyway.

That's not Elijah's only difficulty amid COVID-19. For the first few weeks of school, he wouldn't take the hand of a teacher he knows because he didn't recognize her with her mask on.

Elijah's teacher had started with a face shield so students could get used to seeing her before she switched to a mask, Bliss said.

Now, another new experience looms with P4J. Bliss said she is thankful her son will receive help even if Jefferson closes again.

"He wasn't receiving the help that he needed, and now he will. One of my biggest fears would be for him to be an 8-year-old first-grader," she said. "If he struggles, he struggles. But I didn't want it to be because the school district wouldn't work for him."

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Teaching students with special needs presents challenges

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For Elijah Buroker, a soon-to-be 5-year-old from Janesville, the closure of schools in spring proved to be a major setback. Elijah has autism and doesn't talk. He also struggles with two rare congenital disorders and vision problems because his left optic nerve never fully formed.

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The NPR Podcast Discusses Lawsuits over IEP Requirements

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The NPR Podcast Discusses Lawsuits over IEP Requirements

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In over 20 states parents are suing school districts because distance-learning is not providing the requirements of their children's IEP. Serious regression for many of these students has occurred.

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Vanessa Ince's daughter, Alexis, has a rare chromosomal abnormality and autism. Alexis has thrived at her public school in Wailuku, Hawaii, and loves spending time with her classmates.

Ince says when the COVID-19 pandemic closed her school in Wailuku, the effect on her daughter's well-being was "devastating."

"Alexis regressed so severely. She was previously, I would say, 95% potty trained and she started wetting herself." She also regressed in other areas, her mother says: She went back to crawling and stopped trying to use her communication device.

Ince says her daughter, who is 10, especially seemed to miss being around other children, as well as her regular routines, structure and stimulation. She went from a "happy, bubbly, loving-life child," to wandering the house aimlessly. "She just looked flat and empty and not really there."

Ince and her husband have filed a lawsuit seeking to get Hawaii's Department of Education to pay for the services Alexis needs in a facility where she can see other children.

They are part of a growing number of parents around the country who are suing schools and state education departments over this issue. The Ince's attorney, Keith Peck, has also filed a suit seeking class action status for all families in the state who argue their students' Individualized Education Plans have been breached during the pandemic. (Hawaii's Department of Education did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.)

There is also a suit seeking national class action status, filed in New York City, that claims would-be plaintiffs in 20 states and growing.

Peck says that because Hawaii is a single, statewide school district, it makes it easier to try to join students' complaints together into one claim. "We want a systemic approach to address people's need for compensation," Peck says.

But advocates and experts say the very nature of special education means it's hard to come up with a single solution that works for everyone - or a remedy under existing rules and laws to even start to address the problem.

Advocates and attorneys who specialize in special education tell NPR that across the country, remote learning did not work very well for many students with disabilities.

First of all, students who are from low-income families are overrepresented in special education, and may not have had devices or Internet access. That can add up to "automatic denial of their free, appropriate public education," says Bill Koski. He directs Stanford Law School's Youth and Education Law Project, which represents low-income students with disabilities in legal cases.

Secondly, students with attention deficit or communication difficulties may not be able to focus on computer screens for significant amounts of time.

And then, occupational, physical and speech therapists, for example, often touch students to guide them, and there aren't good substitutes for that over video chat.

A touchier question is whether districts have been trying hard enough to meet special education students' needs and fulfill their obligations under federal law during the pandemic.

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued guidance in March urging flexibility under the law during school shutdowns. She announced that special education law shouldn't stand in the way of the shift to online learning, and that students who missed out on therapies, for example, should be re-evaluated in the fall and receive "compensatory services," if necessary.

Koski, the advocate at Stanford, says there is a widespread understanding of the difficulty districts have been in. "There was almost a grace period during the shutdowns in the spring. Everybody was like, OK, this is uncharted territory." But now, he says, complaints, as well as simple requests for reevaluations, are likely to mount, which leads to its own problem: a backlog of paperwork that can lead to delays in resolving each case.

Alexander Campbell is a 14-year-old with autism who advocates for his fellow special education students in the state of Virginia with the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint. He said the pandemic has made existing inequalities worse.

"Students aren't receiving equitable services during regular normal schooling," he says. "And now that it's in the pandemic, it's been even worse, to the point where the school systems are trying to convince students and parents not even to receive services at all."

When Campbell's high school closed down, they sent his parents a letter dated April 16th asking to amend his Individualized Education Plan to suspend certain services. Campbell's family refused to sign. (His school did not respond to NPR's request for comment.)

Like Koski, Campbell says that, "we should be reasonable with schools saying, you know, that they can't provide every accommodation." For example, usually Campbell is allowed to chew gum in order to help him focus in class, and, "I don't expect them to get in the car and bring me a pack of gum to my house." But for fellow students whose families may be poor or may not speak English well, he's concerned about schools trying to push them to give up services they're entitled to.

Campbell's concern is echoed by Wanda Blanchett, the dean of the education school at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She says that special education has historically been a "struggle" with its roots in the civil rights movement. To this day, Black and brown students tend to be overrepresented in certain kinds of special education, meaning this struggle intersects with issues of race, class and English-speaking status.

"Even though we have the legal protections, we know there are, every day, children that are guaranteed these services and they're not provided services when there is no pandemic," Blanchett says. "So it is certainly conceivable and real that these services have been disrupted [during the pandemic]."

But Julie Mead, who researches legal issues related to special education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says there's a potential problem with these lawsuits.

"Students with disabilities require programming that is special. That's the whole point - 'special' education," she says. In other words, for the very reason that each of these students is different, and needs different services, it may be harder to get courts to recognize them as a class, Mead says. She notes that, ever since a 2011 Supreme Court decision, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, certifying a class for a class action suit has gotten more complicated.

"What often becomes difficult is that judges look at this and say, 'Wait a minute. Kids with disabilities are so different, I'm reluctant to certify this as a class action because I'm not confident that we could come up with a remedy that satisfies everybody's needs.' "

And yet, Blanchett says, "what we did last March as a stopgap measure is not sufficient for this fall." All these suits and complaints express a very real feeling among many families that they need schools to step up and do a better job taking care of students with disabilities.

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Families Of Children With Special Needs Are Suing In Several States. Here's Why.

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Vanessa Ince's daughter, Alexis, has a rare chromosomal abnormality and autism. Alexis has thrived at her public school in Wailuku, Hawaii, and loves spending time with her classmates. Ince says when the COVID-19 pandemic closed her school in Wailuku, the effect on her daughter's well-being was "devastating." "Alexis regressed so severely.