Children with autism miss out as school districts make their own rules By Tracey Tully New York Times,Updated April 28, 2021, 10:16 a.m. Email to a Friend An empty classroom at a closed school in Manhattan in July 2020.Ashley Gilbertson/NYT Eric Alarcon, who will be 4 next month, has autism. He can say a few words and identify a variety of dinosaurs. He lives with his parents in Secaucus, New Jersey, a 10-mile drive from midtown Manhattan. Eric and his peers in a special-education class have had about 100 hours of in-person instruction in the first eight months of the school year.