Students with autism were among hardest hit by sudden changes to schooling

Oct. 2--MOSES LAKE -- While all students and their families have had to navigate through changes to schooling brought on by the pandemic, few have felt the impact like students with autism, whose routines were upended in March.

The sudden transition in the spring, as the pandemic first hit the region, was jarring. For Sheri Nitta's son Benjamin, a seventh-grade student at Chief Moses Middle School, the change in routine from classes in the district's Life Skills program to online classes at his grandmother's house was disorienting and couldn't provide the same kinds of support.

"He didn't fully understand what was going on," Sheri Nitta said. "He kinda knew, but he didn't understand why he was going to his nan's every day."

Some of Benjamin's therapies also didn't translate well to online learning, she said, as he is unable to do one-on-one speech therapy and therapy to help him overcome food aversions. He had also been working with his teacher to be more social, lessons Nitta believed weren't as effective when he was isolated at home.

"He had all of these IEP (individual education plan) goals that he didn't reach at the end of the year," Nitta said.

And while she notes that she had supportive teachers and staff at the Moses Lake School District that worked to help her through those early months, Moses Lake parent Tiffanie Miller, who's still working to get her 16-year-old son in classes with the MLSD, described watching helplessly in the spring as her son declined.

When the state issued its stay at home order, Miller's son was staying in a group home in Spokane, where she said his instruction was abruptly cut short as speech therapists, occupational therapists and physical therapists stopped entering group settings. As her son's routine support system evaporated, so too did her son's behavioral health.

"The average person is dependent on routine and schedule, and when that goes away you can feel a little lost," Miller said. "A child with autism is devastated. They regress in those areas."

By the time she took her son out of the group home, he had lost over 20 pounds, Miller said. She took him across the state to Seattle Children's Hospital for, among other things, adjustments to his medication and behavior plan.

"He's just dwindling, I'm just watching him decline," she said at the beginning of September. "It's taxing, it's taken pretty much all that I have just to care for him and to try to keep some kind of a schedule, and to create some kind of a routine for him out of nothing."

He wasn't alone, Miller said -- while at Seattle Children's, health professionals told her they were overwhelmed with cases like her son's.

"They say we have a whole state of kids with (individual education plans) who can't go to school and who are in crisis now," Miller said.

Though it has taken a few weeks, while Miller worked to enroll her son at Moses Lake School District, he has started to show improvement under the regimen of a new behavior plan, she said, and he'll soon be in the classroom four hours a day, four days a week. Moses Lake High School remains closed to most students due to coronavirus concerns, but it is opening its doors to small groups of students with special needs, Miller said. While she had hoped for full in-person education, she's grateful for the compromise.

"I'm not completely happy with it but I'm not completely disappointed either, it's a pretty good meet-in-the-middle," Miller said. "I was pretty thrilled he'll be getting some in-person instruction because I think online learning for kids like him is next to impossible."

For Nitta, whose son is taking in-person lessons five days a week, the new school year has brought vast improvements from the spring. Benjamin is seeing all of his therapists one-on-one again.

So far this year, everything's been great, she said. Now she just hopes that there won't be any more sudden changes.

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