[Source: The Hechinger Report]

The Northshore School District, in an upper-middle-class suburb of Seattle, was among the first in Washington state – and in the country – to close due to the coronavirus. Less than a week after the March 5 closure, one Northshore parent, Amy Amirault, noticed a shift in the tone of other parents on social media. “We’re in this together” quickly turned to finger-pointing at “those kids,” one of whom was her eldest son.

Amirault’s son Daniel Sabol, 14, has autism. She said he was essentially nonverbal and had difficulty holding conversations – either online or in person. Certain sounds and songs on a computer can send him into “screaming and sobbing fits,” she said, and a visual that catches his eye may make him demand to watch a tutorial again and again. Before now, the most he’d done on a video call was to wave to grandma. Online education was unlikely to work well for him.

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