Illustration of the Zeta Charter School in Manhattan and Raynardo Antonio Ocasio, age 6, with his mother. Image: Raynardo Antonio Ocasio and his grandmother, Ernestina Malave, who takes care of him in the mornings until his mother is home from work. Image: Winston Brown, 15, and his mother, Gilian Mcleish. He was banished to virtual instruction at his charter school in Philadelphia. Image: Raheem Nixon, 19, and his 8 month old daughter Alayah.
Advocates say the students they’ve seen removed from in-person classes this year are the same ones who’ve been traditionally more likely to be removed from class: children with disabilities, who have a harder time following some rules, and Black or Latino children who areImage: Raynardo Antonio Ocasio and his grandmother, Ernestina Malave, who takes care of him in the mornings until his mother is home from work.
Months before vaccines would be available, Kim asked teachers to volunteer to come into the school so that a small group of students — mostly students with special needs and those whose parents were essential workers — could return to face-to-face instruction.Raynardo has a speech and language impairment that makes it hard for him to comply with instructions. He had difficulty expressing himself, especially while wearing a mask.
“It’s a nightmare, a total nightmare,” said Irizarry, who works an overnight shift as a nurse in a New York City jail and now must stay awake through the school day to keep her easily distracted son engaged in the online classes he hates. “I suspect this is happening a lot more than we know,” said Margie Wakelin, a staff attorney at Pennsylvania’s Education Law Center. “This is definitely not just a practice of one school or school district.”But many parents don’t realize they could make a legal argument to keep their child in the classroom, said Perry Zirkel, a professor emeritus of education and law at Lehigh University, who tracks special education court cases and complaints.
“What I have seen is a belief among school administrators that somehow, because of Covid, the original federal requirements don’t apply,” she said. She’s working with two students whose schools threatened expulsion before moving them to virtual instruction. But neither school has begun expulsion procedures, Wakelin said. Instead, these students were sent to virtual instruction without a hearing where they could formally dispute the accusations, or provide context by telling their version of events.
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