During COVID, they believed home was safer than school. Now some NYC parents are accused of neglect.

NEW YORK – There was no warning, just a knock on the door of Melissa Keaton’s apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. 

She opened it to find a caseworker with the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, the New York City agency tasked with investigating suspected child neglect and abuse. 

Still shaken by the death of her father from COVID-19, Keaton hadn’t sent her 9-year-old daughter to school since classes started mid-September. It was now the end of October, and the caseworker explained to Keaton, a former PTA president at her daughter’s school, that someone had reported the family for educational neglect.

When New York City opened its schools this fall for in-person learning, with no option for virtual instruction, families across the five boroughs opted to keep their children home. They worried about the health of their children and vulnerable loved ones and remained unconvinced it was safe to return to full buildings.