A digital divide haunts US schools adapting to virus hurdles

Abigail Schneider, eight, completes a level of her learning game with her mother April in her bedroom in the Brooklyn borough of New York. — AP

When April Schneider’s children returned to in-person classrooms this year, she thought they were leaving behind the struggles from more than a year of remote learning. No more problems with borrowed tablets. No more days of missed lessons because her kids couldn’t connect to their virtual schooling.

But coronavirus cases in her children’s New York City classrooms, and the subsequent quarantines, sent her kids back to learning from home. Without personal devices for each child, Schneider said they were largely left to do nothing while stuck at home.