Boy, 4, Leaves School Without Coat, Walks Home in Freezing Cold: Mother

The school is promising to step up additional security efforts

A furious Brooklyn mother is demanding to know how her 4-year-old son was able to leave his classroom and walk back home unnoticed by school employees in the middle of the school day Friday.

The boy, Symeir Talley-Jasper, went to the bathroom at PS 59 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, then returned to find his pre-K classroom empty, apparently after his class went to the auditorium, his mother said. 

The boy, not knowing what else to do, walked home, said his mother. He lives on the same block as the school so it wasn't a long walk, but his mother said it was unacceptable for the boy to be outside alone with no coat. 

The death of Avonte Oquendo, the 14-year-old boy whose body was found three months after he ran away from his Queens school, also weighed heavily on Quantasia Jasper.

"I'm upset because anything could have happened," she told reporters Friday. "There's so many different possibilities. There's all these shootings going on, robberies going on. Anyone could have ran into the school while he was running out of the school. Anything could have happened." 

Community advocates called for the employees responsible for the child to be terminated, and asked the school make procedural changes, like taking head counts of students when they are moved to different rooms.

The school's principal, Dawn Best, sent a letter home to parents Friday stating that "additional steps have been taken to ensure the safety and welfare of the students in our school."

Best said the school was installing alarms on all secondary doors, and was working to expedite an already approved order for video surveillance cameras for the school. 

The Department of Education said it's investigating. 

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