Benjamin De Simone can’t talk. He can’t walk. He can’t stand on his own. But he can go to school.

The 21-year-old, born with a brain deformation, is in his final year at a private Essex County academy where public schools send students with special education needs they can’t accommodate. There, the school nurse carefully handled Benjamin’s feeding tube, and a team of specialists provided physical, occupational and speech therapy.

Then the coronavirus pandemic changed everything.

The spread of the potentially fatal disease has forced a statewide closure of schools and a shift to “home instruction.” Now, Benjamin’s West Orange family worries his critical support services will be abandoned for weeks, if not months, while he waits at home.

“I’m terrified,” said Joanne De Simone, Benjamin’s mother. “I can’t replicate what an entire team of people can do for him.”

Like Benjamin, more than 200,000 New Jersey students who require special education services are stuck at home with no easy access to the aides and specialists who typically interact with them. Services they’re required to receive, such as therapy and counseling, won’t necessarily be made up, according to state rules.

During home instruction days, schools must provide special education and related services identified in each student’s Individualized Education Program “to the greatest extent possible,” according to the state Department of Education. But those services might not be possible given social distancing recommendations and state restrictions on tele-therapy, school leaders say.

Whether any of the support is made up later will be determined on a case-by-case basis, according to the state. Students’ IEP teams, which includes their parents, will meet after schools reopen to make those decisions, the state said.

Until then, parents worry their children will be left behind in the unprecedented scramble to move more than 2,500 schools to remote learning, said John Rue, a special education attorney.

“The concern that we have is that in the chaos or in the paying attention to the big picture — which is all good — there are voices that don’t get heard,” Rue said.

‘Stressful on a good day’

Benjamin isn’t the only one in his house with special needs.

His younger brother Sebastian, 17, is autistic and typically gets group counseling at West Orange High School as part of his IEP. There’s no way to replicate that at home, Joanne De Simone said.

She’s worried about everything. Her sons’ education. Their health. Her family’s finances if her husband, who works in the film industry, misses paychecks.

“It’s stressful on a good day,” she said.

But she doesn’t blame the schools. Nobody has all the answers during a pandemic, she said.

New Jersey school administrators, along with the state Department of Education, have spent the past two weeks in a mad dash to execute a scenario that seemed only theoretical until the moment it wasn’t.

Online learning plans. Mass laptop distribution. Schedules for school lunch pickups. All were at the forefront while the state was “pretty much creating a new educational system,” as state Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet described the frenzy.

But a gap in therapy and counseling can be especially detrimental to students who need special education. Every one of those students has their own IEP that calls for necessary services, usually offered by specialists who meet one-on-one or for group therapy at the school.

“This is probably by far and away the most complicated of all the issues before the (education) department,” said David Hespe, a former state education commissioner under Gov. Chris Christie.

‘There is no playbook’

At CTC Academy in Oakland, many students can’t speak or walk.

Some may never have the dexterity to hold a pencil.

Most students at the school — a private school where public schools send their most vulnerable students — have their own aides during class and receive multiple forms of therapy, executive director Ken Berger said.

The school sent academic instructional packets home for parents, and teachers and therapists will make regular phone calls to offer support. But since the state doesn’t allow tele-therapy for special education, the school can’t completely fulfill IEP requirements, Berger said.

“Here is the bottom line for us and I think for a lot of schools out there: We are doing everything possible to try to support the students and their families in this time," Berger said. “That is what we are doing. That is our North Star. That is what our focus is on.”

Other schools have offered to send staff to students’ homes, said Gerard Thiers, executive director of ASAH, a group representing schools for students with significant disabilities. But families are reluctant to have visitors for health reasons, he said.

Services could potentially be made up in the summer, though many students with special education needs are already enrolled in extended school years that continue deep into the summer, he said. There are no easy answers to parents’ questions.

“There is no playbook for this. It has never happened,” Thiers said. "But we are working together every day to figure it out so our students feel safe and continue to learn.”

Benjamin’s mother said she knows schools are trying. Still, she worries that students will lose services their parents pushed so hard for them to receive.

“What happens to everything you fought for, and now all of the sudden you are getting wiped out?” Joanne De Simone said. “How does that work? How is that fair?”

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on twitter at @realAdamClark. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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