while the city DOE says all families who have requested devices for remote learning have gotten them, the parents who are suing in Manhattan Supreme Court say poor kids and those who don’t speak English are still not getting “free and reliable Internet service or reliable, working iPads and laptops.”

“Untold numbers of low-income students, and especially low-income students of color, in New York City have been deprived and continue to be deprived, of the sound basic education that is their right,” the group of anonymous parents claim in the litigation.

Some of the children whose parents are fighting in court did not receive any devices for months into remote learning, according to the court papers. //

A July audit by the City Comptroller’s office found that as of March, the DOE was still reviewing 19,425 student requests for tablets, 16,000 of which dated to 2020, while 3,045 students were mistakenly sent more than one remote learning device.

The city has handed out more than 650,000 Internet enabled devices and more than 27,000 hot spots, and schools have bought more than 400,000 devices, said a DOE spokeswoman who called the city’s distribution of remote learning devices “robust.”