Last week, Sofia Guido, a 16-year-old nonverbal special needs student, saw a yellow school bus on her Staten Island street.

“She immediately grabbed her bookbag, her coat, wanted them on, and stood at the door and was doing that throughout the day, and was using her device to say, 'I want school.' And it was heartbreaking,” her mom, Susan Guido, said.

Sofia is one of more than 20,000 students attending District 75 schools for students with disabilities. As she stood at the door, staring at the bus, she couldn’t understand why she couldn’t get on it.

“We as adults can process what’s going on, and we’re still not happy about it. And then you have a child, special needs or not, that are trying to process what’s been done to them, what’s being taken away from them,” Guido said.

 

What You Need To Know

  • District 75 serves more than 20,000 public school students with disabilities

  • Among them is Sofia Guido, a non-verbal 16-year-old who has struggled to learn remotely

  • Like many other special needs students, she has also been missing speech, physical and occupational therapy

 

Sofia’s school, Great Kills High School at P.S. 37, is resuming in-classroom instruction for the first time since mid November. It is welcome news to parents like her mother, who say their children regress without the instruction and services they get at school.

“Physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, it is near impossible for them to reach through the computer and do the therapies with my daughter,” she said.

The city offers those therapies remotely, as it did the last three weeks for Sofia, and all last spring when schools were closed. But despite her therapists best efforts, the remote help hasn’t worked well for Sofia.

“She will jump on a virtual to see the therapist for maybe five minutes. Is she actually getting therapy during those sessions? Absolutely not. It’s not their fault, but that’s the real picture of what’s happened to these students since March,” she said.

Guido juggles being her child's teacher, therapist and mom. But remote learning has proven so difficult for Sofia that on many days, they simply don't log on.

"I’m not going to create this false narrative that it is effective for her, when it is 1,000% not,” she said.

Returning to school Thursday will be a relief, but it will be short lived. While Mayor Bill de Blasio has said the city is moving toward providing students with in-person instruction five days a week, Sofia's school is maintaining blended learning. She'll be in class one week and remote the next.

“It’s kind of like, you give her a piece of candy and you take it away,” her mother said.

An Education Department spokeswoman says the city expects the school will offer daily instruction soon.

“We know how important in-person learning is for our students with disabilities, and we anticipate that this site will soon be moving to in-person learning every week, five days a week,” Danielle Filson said. “The realities of the pandemic are challenging, and schools across the city are working through staffing and space concerns so that they can safely increase the number of in-person days for our students with disabilities.”