7 and out of school since 2017: How Jazmiah slipped through the cracks of NYC’s special ed system

Alex Zimmerman:

On a January afternoon, seven-year-old Jazmiah Vasquez was teaching herself how to make goo out of eye drops, shaving cream, and Elmer’s glue. Based on instructions from a YouTube video, she mixed the ingredients together with a spoon, grinning at the sticky white ooze.

It wasn’t part of a homework assignment or school project. Jazmiah, who is autistic, and struggles with ADHD and behavior issues, has not attended school for nearly a year and a half. The scene playing out in her living room that afternoon was just her latest attempt at staving off boredom.

Her mother, Lisa Vasquez, says she is desperate to get her daughter into a school. She routinely emails the education department, has protested outside its Brooklyn offices with her two children in tow, and testified at a February City Council hearing and pleaded with lawmakers to intervene.

A legal ruling, issued last October, faulted the education department for failing to find a school placement for Jazmiah or providing any other appropriate education. But in the six and half months that followed, she was not provided one.