Family Outraged After Girl With Autism Leaves School In Middle Of Day Unsupervised

A Florida mother is outraged after her 6-year-old daughter showed up at her door in the middle of a school day on Monday. Zoe Maglio, who has been diagnosed with autism, left her school and walked about half a mile to her house in the Miami suburbs without adult supervision.

“We get a knock at the door and my sister-in-law saw Zoe standing there alone. No adult, nobody was there,” Zoe’s mother, Danielle Maglio, told CBS Miami.

Last January, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) proposed “Avonte’s law,” federal legislation that would provide tracking devices for children with autism. The bill was named for Avonte Oquendo, a 14-year-old boy with autism who walked out of his school in Long Island City, New York, and was found dead three months later. The 2014 bill never moved out of committee, but Schumer reintroduced legislation this month in the new Congress.

However, a different law named after Avonte was signed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in August. The law calls for the city’s Department of Education to install audible alarms on the doors of public school buildings that serve special-needs students where it is determined they are needed.

The Huffington Post