Computers Secured, Connection Still Needed: Understanding How COVID-19-related Remote Schooling Impacted Spanish-speaking Mothers of Emergent Bilinguals with Dis/abilities

When the COVID-19 pandemic triggered shelter-in-place orders and school closures, many turned to remote schooling as a means for delivering vital instruction while observing public health guidelines. However, the swift shift to remote schooling highlighted an area of significant educational inequity across the United States, especially in urban districts and immigrant households: technology access. Centering the experiences of Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers of emergent bilinguals with disabilities in New York City, this paper presents how technology served as both burden and utility for linguistically-, economically-marginalized families and shares how direct multilingual home-school communication was the most supportive yet scarce resource.