The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

24 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALSUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2020

Since Joy Williams’s daughter,
Verona, was born blind and quad-
riplegic, Ms. Williams has dedi-
cated all her time to raising her.
After Verona, 17, transitioned to
remote learning in March, Ms.
Williams took on even more of her
care.
“I’ve become a physical thera-
pist, occupational therapist,
speech therapist and a teacher,”
said Ms. Williams, 52.
In addition to abruptly losing
the in-person support that Verona
had received at the Lavelle School
for the Blind in the Bronx, Ms.
Williams faced challenges just

getting her daughter online for
school. The iPad her daughter re-
ceived from the city’s Department
of Education had one app and did
not accommodate her learning
disabilities.
“Our students can’t turn the
computer on by themselves or
launch the Google Meet by them-
selves,” said Rebecca Renshaw,
the executive director of the
Lavelle School. “They rely on
their parents because of these sig-
nificant disabilities.”
Administrators at the school,
which is private but state-sup-
ported and serves 125 students,
realized the iPads were a problem
for some of its students, who have
visual impairments along with
other disabilities.
To help get students ready for
the new school year, school offi-
cials bought seven specialized
tablets with a $2,500 grant from
Catholic Charities Archdiocese of
New York, one of 10 organizations
supported by The New York
Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The city’s Department of Edu-
cation allows any child who at-
tends a public school or a private
school that receives special edu-
cation services to get an iPad.
Even before remote learning be-
gan, the city offered software and
hardware to assist children with
disabilities based on a student’s
specific educational needs.
But in recent months, the
Lavelle School wanted customiz-
able tablets to better accommo-
date remote learning for students
who have several disabilities.
The new tablets, Ms. Renshaw
said, can download several apps,
providing more choices for math,
for instance, and settings can be
adjusted to help students with vis-
ual impairments.
“There’s no barriers,” Ms. Ren-
shaw said, adding that, with help
from grants, the school had dis-
tributed about 100 specialized tab-
lets to its students.
Having several ways to access
remote learning also eased prob-
lems for students who are low-in-
come, like Verona, who receives
$464 in Social Security disability
benefits each month. At the start
of the coronavirus pandemic, 20
percent of families whose children
attended the Lavelle School had
only a phone, or no device at all, to
access online learning, Ms. Ren-
shaw said.
“I would say the biggest differ-
ence between what we’re able to
offer now is that they’re not re-
stricted in their access,” she said.
Verona received her iPad last
month, and Ms. Williams said it
had eased her daughter’s full-time
remote learning from their public
housing apartment in the Bronx.
“The support and everything I
get from the school helps a lot be-
cause, some parents, we just don’t
know how to navigate the iPad,”
Ms. Williams said. “We’re both
learning as we go along.”
Silvia Chavez, a mother of two
who lives in the Bronx, also con-
fronted disruption in March, when

her daughter, Allison, began using her cellphone to do schoolwork at home. Allison, 3, attends the Bronx Early Childhood Center, a preschool operated by Children’s Aid, another of The Fund’s beneficia- ries. She had trouble concentrat- ing while working on the iPhone, Ms. Chavez said. “The process was kind of hard, because she really wanted to go to school every day,” Ms. Chavez, 33, said in Spanish through an inter- preter. In addition, Ms. Chavez was taking classes remotely at City Tech, where she is studying con- struction management. Juggling her coursework and trying to get by financially was compounded by the additional child care re- sponsibilities. “It affected me totally,” said Ms. Chavez, who receives $381 in Sup- plemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. “I did not have sufficient money to buy things for me, food, or to buy anything for the children.” She ended up four months be- hind on her electricity bill this summer. In June, Children’s Aid provided Ms. Chavez with $551.51 for her Con Ed bill and gave her a $63.48 Amazon gift card to buy a tablet for her daughter. She decided to have her children continue with remote learning full-time this school year, and said that Allison is much happier now that she has the tablet, and

understands that she is attending school through the device. But Ms. Chavez still struggles to balance her children’s education and her own. “It’s been very hard because I’m doing my home- work and schoolwork during the middle of the night,” she said. Keyandra Dreher, 32, chose to postpone her college studies at the start of the year when she en-

tered the final term of her high- risk pregnancy. Ms. Dreher, who has asthma and high blood pres- sure, gave birth in March to Ka- mari just as New York City shut down. Ms. Dreher and her husband, who live at a BronxWorks shelter in the High Bridge section of the borough, found themselves caring for their newborn and helping their four other children navigate remote learning. “I had to readjust everything because this is four grades with four different teachers,” said Ms. Dreher, whose second-youngest child is in preschool. The family was among many in the BronxWorks shelter and oth- ers throughout the city that needed assistance when schools closed. Seeing the need, New York Community Trust, a beneficiary of The Fund and its Covid-19 relief campaign in the spring, provided help to several nonprofit housing groups. The assistance “allows us to in- tentionally focus on the students in our shelters,” said Eileen Tor- res, the executive director of BronxWorks. BronxWorks received funding in July and purchased head-

phones and Chromebooks for students. It also outfitted learning rooms with smart boards and fur- niture. The organization trained staff to help families with technol- ogy problems and organized after-school activities to promote learning. “The pandemic really confined our families to tiny units that they have, and while of course every- one wants young people to spend a fair amount of time learning, they still are children that need to have some kind of fun,” Ms. Torres said. Ms. Dreher said that her children received activity books, in- cluding coloring pages and cross- word puzzles, along with clothing and other essentials. She has started using multipli- cation flash cards with her 9-year- old and hopes the practice will in- crease the child’s confidence to speak up in remote classes if she has a question. Despite the difficulties of remote learning, Ms. Dreher decided to keep her children at home this school year. “I feel like those babies were rushed back to school,” she said. “It’s safer to let my kids do remote until it’s under control.”

THE NEEDIEST CASES FUND

When Schools Shut, These Remote Learners Needed Help

By ELISHA BROWN

SPECIAL SECTION: FINE ARTS

& EXHIBITS

An article on Page 6 about the
Asia Society Triennial misstates

Michelle Yun’s role at the Asia
Society Museum. She is the
senior curator of modern and
contemporary art, not only of
contemporary art.
Because of an editing error, an
article on Page 14 about a four-
decade retrospective on the work
of Sue Coe misstates the status

of Peter Eleey, who organized “Sue Coe: It Can Happen Here.” He is the chief curator at MoMA PS1, not the former chief curator.

MAGAZINE An article on Page 22 about the chef Gaggan Anand misstates the location of the Don’t Tell Aunty restaurant. It is in Sydney, Australia, not Melbourne. An article on Page 26 about the tech company Palantir omits part of the name of a German pharmaceutical company. It is Merck K.G.a.A., not simply Merck, which is the name of an American company.

Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.

Corrections

Contact the Newsroom [email protected] or call 1-844-NYT-NEWS (1-844-698-6397). Editorials [email protected] Newspaper Delivery [email protected] or call 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637).

Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund may be sent to:

P.O. Box 5193 New York, N.Y. 10087

All donations are acknowledged; special letters are not possible. A check intended for a particular agency participating in the annual campaign should be written to and mailed to the agency, noting that it is a Neediest Cases gift.

Brooklyn Community Services 285 Schermerhorn Street Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217

Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New York 1011 First Avenue New York, N.Y. 10022

Children’s Aid 711 Third Avenue, Suite 700 New York, N.Y. 10017

Community Service Society of New York 633 Third Avenue, 10th Floor New York, N.Y. 10017

Feeding America 35 East Wacker Drive, Suite 2000 Chicago, IL 60601

First Book 1319 F Street NW, Suite 1000 Washington, D.C. 20004

International Rescue Committee P.O. Box 6068 Albert Lea, Minn. 56007-9847

New York Community Trust 909 Third Avenue, 22nd Floor New York, N.Y. 10022

UJA-Federation of New York Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100 New York, N.Y. 10261-4100 World Central Kitchen 1342 Florida Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 20009

Donations may be made at nytimes.com/neediest.

To donate stock to the fund, call 212-556-1137 or email [email protected]. Gifts and bequests are deductible for income and estate tax purposes.

No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

The New York Times Company pays for all administrative costs of the Fund, so every dollar donated to the fund goes directly to serve those in need.

The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a not-for- profit public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions to the Neediest Cases Fund are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Federal Identification Number: 13-6066063. A copy of the Neediest Cases Fund’s latest annual financial report may be obtained, upon request, from the Fund or from the New York State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau, Attn: FOIL Officer, 120 Broadway, New York, New York 10271.

To delay may mean to forget.

How to Help

The 109th annual fund-raising campaign for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund is under way and continues through December. To make donations or read previous articles: nytimes.com/neediest

ONLINE:THE NEEDIEST CASES

NASA’s effort to grab a piece of an asteroid on Tuesday may have worked a little too well. The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REX, grabbed so much rock and dirt that some of the material is now leaking back into space. The operation some 200 million miles from Earth on the other side of the sun was “almost too suc- cessful,” Dante Lauretta, the prin- cipal investigator of the mission, said during a telephone news con- ference on Friday. NASA officials worried that without careful effort to secure its samples in the days ahead, the mission could lose much of the scientific payload it traveled for years across the solar system to gather. A few rocks wedged in the ro- botic probe’s collection mechanism prevented a flap from fully closing. In images taken by the spacecraft, scientists could see bits of asteroid coming out. Dr. Lauretta estimated that each im- age showed about 5 to 10 grams — up to about a third of an ounce — of material floating around the collector. That is a significant loss as the mission’s aim is to bring back at least 60 grams of asteroid

dirt and rocks. “You’ve got to remember the entire system is in microgravity,” Dr. Lauretta said. The particles move as if in a fluid, “and particles are kind of diffusing out,” he said. However, the visual evidence suggests that the spacecraft gath- ered much more than 60 grams. Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for science, said NASA has decided to start prepa- rations for stowing the sample. “Time is of the essence,” he said. If the collection attempt had not succeeded, OSIRIS-REX could have made two more attempts. Mission managers also decided to call off two maneuvers. One, scheduled for Friday, was to slow down the spacecraft and to allow it to re-enter orbit around the asteroid Bennu, which is only about 1,600 feet in diameter. Instead, it continues to drift away at a speed of less than one mile per hour. The second one was to spin the spacecraft around on Saturday to measure how much is trapped in- side the mechanism. But that would shake out more material. “So that is not a prudent path to go down,” Dr. Lauretta said.

The collection of a sample was the key objective of the mission whose full name is Origins, Spec- tral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer. Asteroids are primitive 4.5-billion-year-old leftovers from the earliest days of the solar system. On Tuesday, the spacecraft’s collection mechanism touched the

asteroid Bennu at a leisurely pace of about 1.5 inches a second. The sampling mechanism, which re- sembles an automobile air filter, had been designed to work on a wide variety of surfaces ranging from completely rigid — “Like running into a slab of concrete,” Dr. Lauretta said — to something much more porous. That part of Bennu turned out to be on the softer side. The sampling mechanism pushed 10 to 20

inches into the soil before the spacecraft backed away, allowing it to fill up its collector when a burst of nitrogen gas from the probe stirred up the surface. “We could not have performed a better collection experiment,” Dr. Lauretta said. The operation to stow the collection mechanism may start on Tuesday. Engineers are looking at how to modify the procedure to minimize the amount of material that may be shaken out into space. It will take several days before the samples are safely stored in a return capsule. OSIRIS-REX must wait until March to leave Bennu and return to Earth, a journey that will take two and a half years. The spacecraft will drop off the return capsule, which will parachute to a landing in Utah on Sept. 24, 2023. OSIRIS-REX is the third mission to attempt to bring back pieces of an asteroid. A Japanese mission, Hayabusa, barely man- aged to bring any samples — about 1,500 grains — back from an asteroid. A second mission, Hayabusa2, to a different asteroid is on its way back to Earth and will drop its payload in December.

NASA Spacecraft Springs Leak After Touching Asteroid

By KENNETH CHANG

Scientists worry they

will lose the samples

the pod collected.

Verona Williams, 17, who was born blind and quadriplegic, received a specialized iPad for her remote schoolwork in September.

CALLA KESSLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ron McMillan and Keyandra Dreher with their five children in the park near their shelter.

JOSHUA BRIGHT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gifts recorded through Oct. 17:
$2,537,299.48.

Silvia Chavez, a mother of two who lives in the Bronx, said the tablet her daughter received helped her concentrate in school.

JOSE A. ALVARADO JR. FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Universal Registry Entries: Zone 2— PsZEq6fBaVO3m6Ia5inj7RbWy LyMdsxs9FlDpxhm+OvbUD 10rB4RSba2geaWCaWBeoVIaA== Zone 3— kjXoTJxJoUJr4AmL5rhMDkrTyJ TY+RBB5KbLyE8qgsOCl9mQd MyOkXmdJNKYTrukOrITBw== Zone 4— HP6eucFUJl+0HckPUMhi8k MfWLTskp+NNW6uy/pJLAW pej0/xikwjVdvrmRmZ+Evil3NSg== These base64-encoded values repre- sent the combined fingerprints of all digital records notarized by Surety between 20201014Z - 20201020Z. http://www.surety.com 239-436-2790

The Plaza and Lobby of 375 Park Avenue will be closed to the public Sun- day Oct. 25, 2020 8am-4pm to preserve the status as a private property.

NOTICES & LOST AND FOUND (5100-5102)

Commercial Notices 5102

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The New York Times - USA (2020-10-25)

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