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Chrystal Bell lives in New York City with her son Caleb, who is deaf, blind and nonverbal. When the pandemic closed schools, he lost access to tactile special education that he needs in order to learn.
Special education services were severely disrupted when schools closed in spring 2020. In many places, they have yet to fully resume. Now, families are demanding schools take action.
Roughly 7 million children in the U.S. receive special education services under a decades-old federal law or
did, until the pandemic began. Many of those services slowed or stopped when schools physically shut down in spring 2020. Modified instruction, behavioral counseling, and speech and physical therapy disappeared or were feebly reproduced online, for three, six, nine months. In some places, they have yet to fully resume. For many children with disabilities, families say this disruption wasn t just difficult. It was devastating.
After Months Of Special Education Turmoil, Families Say Schools Owe Them
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Families Fight Schools For The Special Education COVID Shut Down : NPR
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Aarti Kaur Sidhu
Disability Rights Maryland
As an education staff attorney for Disability Rights Maryland, Aarti Kaur Sidhu advocates for the rights of students with disabilities. As the COVID-19 pandemic has created unique challenges, Sidhu has spent countless hours supporting families of students with disabilities. Through her work with the Maryland Coalition to Reform School Discipline, she advocated for positive school discipline reform in local school systems, the Maryland State Department of Education and the Maryland General Assembly. Sidhu believes her greatest accomplishment was getting sworn into the Maryland Bar.
“As the child of Asian immigrants, there are stereotypes about my perceived intellectual abilities and that my parents would have exceedingly high expectations regarding my professional career; however, that is not true in my family. In 1978, my working-class parents moved to Maryland from India to provide a better life for me and my siblings. Their only expe