[Source:  The Philadelphia Inquirer]

The behaviors started a few days after COVID-19 closed schools indefinitely in March: Eleven-year-old Ronan Strouse would bite one arm, issue frequent short, high-pitched yells, bang his leg hard.

Ronan, who has intellectual disability, autism and other complicated conditions, can’t carry on a conversation, but he had words enough to ask his mother: “School sick?” “Yes,” Celine Nace would tell her son. “School is sick.”

As a fifth grader in the Upper Perkiomen School District, Ronan was supposed to have virtual lessons with his teacher, and a host of services such as occupational and speech therapy on the computer, too. But that didn’t work for more than perhaps 10 minutes a week; Ronan would refuse to sit, walk away, unable to grasp or tolerate what he was supposed to do. The problems continued this summer, when he had online-only services as mandated by his special education plan.

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