NEW YORK – New York City mother Tanya Acevedo is suing the city school district over the bumbling bureaucracy that oversees homeschooled students.

Acevedo, who removed her son from public school to homeschool the boy, was threatened with an Administration for Children’s Services investigation for “educational neglect” in March after her son’s former school continued to mark him absent, the New York Post reports.

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Acevedo filed the proper paperwork to withdraw her son from public schools, with guidance from her pastor and his wife, who homeschooled their own children. She went to the district’s Central Office of Home Schooling on Seventh Avenue to pick up the paperwork, and sent the forms by certified mail to the superintendent and her son’s former school.

But the Central Office never removed her son from attendance records, and the school reported her to CPS for “educational neglect” after more than a month out of school. So when a CPS investigator arrived at her home at 7 p.m. to demand proof Acevedo wasn’t neglectful, she called the Home School Legal Defense Associations after-hours hotline and spoke with vice president of litigation Jim Mason.

Mason detailed his discussion with the investigator in a post about the ordeal on the HSLDA website:

… Tanya had put me on the phone with the CPS investigator.

Explaining her perceived obligations, the investigator insisted that she interview the child in private and inspect the apartment.

“I think we can clear this all up tomorrow,” I proposed, “by having Tanya provide you with her proof that she is lawfully homeschooling.”

After explaining to me the urgent need to look inside Tanya’s refrigerator—because that’s what they always do when a child has been absent from school—the investigator thought it might be okay to wait until the next day. She called her supervisor, confirmed that refrigerator-snooping could be postponed, and left after sternly instructing Tanya to produce documents and child the next day at her office.

Mason contacted TJ Schmidt, a homeschool attorney in New York, to help Acevedo the next day, and Schmidt explained why Acevedo and other homeschooling families routinely get the run-around in the Big Apple.

“First, rather than letting homeschooling families deal with their own school districts (as set out in the regulations), New York City has consolidated all of the administrative functions relating to homeschooling for all the school districts in all five boroughs in one central office on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan,” Mason wrote. “Second, it underfunds and undermans that office, which routinely leads to delays, lost paperwork, and a high level of underperformance and dissatisfaction.

“Finally, NYC’s central homeschooling office controls the attendance database for all schools in the entire city inasmuch as the data relates to homeschooling.”

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In other words, the NYC homeschooling office is responsible for correcting the alleged absences reported by schools, and they’re not too quick at making the change.

“Even though the school knew Tanya had filed a notice of intent to homeschool, it reported her to CPS for ‘educational neglect’ because its policy required it to do so after so many ‘absences’ had accrued,” Mason wrote. “After many phone calls, another visit from the CPS investigator, considerable inconvenience, and much unnecessary anxiety for Tanya and her son, TJ persuaded the case worker to close the investigation.”

Further investigation revealed dozens of other homeschooling families who have also been mistreated by the city education bureaucracy, and the HSLDA filed a lawsuit to stop the madness earlier this month.

“The injustice against homeschooling families in New York City can no longer be tolerated,” Mason wrote. “On December 5, HSLDA filed a civil rights lawsuit against New York City public schools over their systematic mistreatment of homeschooling families. We are asking for money damages and for a court to order the New York City bureaucracy to simply follow New York’s homeschooling regulation.”