Parents of Students With Disabilities Try to Make Up for Lost Year

In New York City, hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities didn’t receive special education services during remote learning.

Caleb Bell is deaf, blind and nonverbal. When classes at his Manhattan school moved online last year, Mr. Bell needed his mother’s help to answer direct questions. She’d often reach over and lift a block with a raised green circle, signifying “yes,” or a raised red X signifying “no.”

But, Mr. Bell, 21, would just sit there, disengaged.

His mother, Chrystal Bell, said her son got “nothing” from his classes and also stopped receiving many of his legally mandated special education services, or received them in a format that did not work.