More than 50 Minnesota school districts continue to use so-called seclusion rooms, according to data obtained by the . Districts use seclusion rooms for children with a disability and who are at risk of harming themselves or others.

This practice is banned or extremely limited in 21 states.

The 50 school districts maintain 194 registered seclusion rooms across 100 school buildings across the state, according to the records.

For the first time, the Minnesota Disability Law Center set out to document the state’s seclusion rooms, photographing more than 80 of them and documenting their locations in a report titled “.”

“I think the average person does not know this is happening in their schools. When they see the rooms and they find out how they’re used, the average person is appalled and is very upset and curious as to why this antiquated and traumatizing practice is still allowed in our schools,” said Jessica Heiser of the Minnesota Disability Law Center in an interview with the Reformer.

Multiple school districts in Minnesota do not practice seclusion, including Minneapolis Public Schools and Fridley Public Schools. Neither Spiro Academy nor Intermediate District 287 — which both specialize in serving students with disabilities — use seclusion.

During the 2023-24 school year, show that 553 students with disabilities were subjected to 3,451 instances of seclusion. In the 2024-25 school year, after seclusion was banned for students in third grade and below, 358 students were subjected to 1,867 episodes of seclusion.

The most recent from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights states that repeated use of seclusion for the same student by a school is likely a violation of the student’s rights.

Heiser said she believes one reason Minnesota has been slow to eliminate seclusion is because the policy affects a small number of students, and remains mostly hidden from the general public — and even from educators, school staff and parents of school-age children.

“Nobody wants their kids in one of these rooms. As a parent, I cannot look at this room and say in good grace that there is a single child that deserves to be locked in a cinder block room in a school,” Heiser said.

In 2023, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law that banned seclusion for students with disabilities from birth through third grade. At the time, the Minnesota Department of Education recommended that the state work towards eliminating the practice entirely by the start of the 2026-27 school year.

But progress towards that goal has halted in the Legislature. Sen. Judy Seeburger, DFL-Afton, proposed legislation last year to rollback the 2023 law banning seclusion for the youngest students. Seeburger also led a , which met 11 times between August and January. In the group’s , Seeburger explained how her adult son was subject to seclusion as a student and why she believes the practice was beneficial.

“The seclusion working group, everybody around the table, except Sen. Seeberger, said ‘We don’t want this practice,’” said Jessica Webster, an attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. “What a bizarre place for us to be standing that all of the voices agree that this is a harmful and traumatic practice that we shouldn’t be using, but we’re still using it.”

Seeberger did not respond to an interview request.

The working group’s meeting materials show a dozen letters that support letting schools continue to use seclusion, with varying degrees of support for rolling back the 2023 ban on using them on younger students. Five of the letters come from a single school district, Intermediate School District 917, which serves as a special education cooperative for nine districts in the south metro. Another five come from other special education cooperatives around the state. Intermediate and cooperative districts typically provide services for students with disabilities who often require services that are provided in separate school buildings.

Black students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to seclusion, making up just 12% of students with disabilities in Minnesota but subject to 22% of all instances of seclusion.

“It is unquestionable in every state, including our own, that seclusion and restrictive procedures in general, like holds on children and locking children in rooms by themselves, is used against boys of color with disabilities more so than any other demographic,” Heiser said.

Heiser added that multiple federal investigations have led to banning seclusion in particular states or school districts because data show it is disproportionately used on boys of color.

Seclusion is primarily used on students between the ages of 6 and 10. Before the ban was implemented for students in third grade and below, these children with disabilities made up about one-third of students with disabilities in Minnesota, but were subject to more than two-thirds of all episodes of seclusion. In the same year, 16% of students with disabilities were ages 16-21, but they made up just 7% of the students subjected to seclusion.

After the K-3 seclusion ban, in the 2024-25 school year, 6 to 10 year olds still made up about one-third of students with disabilities, but they accounted for only 46% of all episodes of seclusion.

Heiser says that some defenders of seclusion say it is necessary because the children can become violent and could hurt someone if not locked in a room. But she calls this a “red herring.” She said it is “common sense” that an older child would be bigger and stronger, and thus more likely to cause injury to another person. She said there’s a simple explanation for why younger children are more likely to be subjected to seclusion: They’re smaller.

“It really just comes down to how easy is it to grab a kid and put them in the closet? It’s easier when they’re littler,” Heiser said.

Students with autism or whose disabilities are categorized as emotional or behavioral disorder are disproportionately more likely to experience seclusion. Just 10% of students with disabilities are in the emotional or behavioral disability category, while they experience about 2 of every 5 seclusion episodes. Students with autism make up about 16% of students with disabilities but experience more than one-third of all seclusion episodes. This did not change after seclusion was banned for K-3 students.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

Krystal Emerson never imagined her son would spend his days at school being forcibly moved against his will by school staff and shut in an empty room.

But during the 2023-24 school year at Ellsworth Elementary-Middle School, that’s what happened — at least 18 times, according to Emerson and school district incident reports reviewed by the Maine Morning Star. Staff members put the 7-year-old boy in holds, forced him into empty rooms and did not let him out until he calmed down or his parents picked him up.

“It broke him, and it broke me,” Emerson said.

The trauma became so severe that her son, now a third grader, no longer attends school in person, she said.

What happened to Emerson’s son is not an isolated case. Across Maine, schools use restraint and seclusion on students more than 10,000 times each year, according to Maine Department of Education data — with some districts resorting to the emergency tactics regularly while others have changed policies and taken other steps so that such interventions are only used as a last resort.

​In recent years, Maine as a whole has made an effort to reduce restraint and seclusion in schools, particularly for students with disabilities, with the U.S. Department of Education citing staff and for students as the reasons to curtail their use. The department has also condemned and discouraged these practices for years under multiple presidential administrations. Rare cases have resulted in serious injuries to students and even death.

A 2021 state law limits restraint and seclusion to emergencies. But as Maine educators in the years since pandemic school closures, there have been calls to allow school staff to restrain and seclude children more often. A would broaden the circumstances under which school staff could restrain or seclude students, among educators, parents and lawmakers about how to manage student behavior without inflicting harm.

The Maine Education Association and the Maine School Management Association, representing teachers and administrators statewide, both support the proposal, citing increased reports of disruptive and violent student behavior — something educators nationwide have also reported in recent years.

The Gardiner-area school system, Maine School Administrative District (MSAD) 11, has led the push for that proposal. Victoria Duguay, principal of River View Community School in Gardiner, and MSAD 11 Superintendent Patricia Hopkins shared stories with lawmakers of students who hit and spit at adults, scream in hallways, throw chairs and destroy other students’ schoolwork.

Under the 2021 state law, school staff can only restrain students (immobilize them and move them against their will) or seclude them (isolate them in a room that they can’t leave) if their behavior “poses an imminent danger of serious physical injury” — requiring medical intervention beyond first aid, according to the Maine Department of Education regulations that govern restraint and seclusion.

“Staff are being hit, they’re being bit, but it doesn’t meet the threshold of serious imminent danger, because a 5-year-old isn’t going to [cause] an injury that requires medical care,” Hopkins said during an April 23 public hearing.

This extreme behavior, when it happens in a public place at school, traumatizes other students who witness it, Duguay said. The school sometimes has to close off access to common spaces — the gym or cafeteria — if a student acts out in a hallway through which students would need to pass.

Under the legislation MSAD 11 is supporting, staff would be able to move students against their will to a seclusion room or another quiet space without it counting as a restraint, which districts have to record, document, and report to the state.

But some educators who have pursued alternative training don’t agree that loosening restraint and seclusion requirements is the answer.

“The consequences of passing this bill will only inflict more trauma on students,” said Audrey Bartholomew, associate professor and coordinator of special education programs at the University of New England, who trains special education teachers. “Additionally, the behavior will keep happening, because restraint and seclusion is not an appropriate response to challenging behavior, and it will in no way help students remediate their behavior. These should not be referred to as strategies, treatments or solutions.”

Inside the three-hour restraint and seclusion of a 7-year-old

In October 2023, Emerson’s son started a behavior plan to help with concentration and self-regulation. The plan, which Emerson shared with the Maine Morning Star, highlighted the mother’s concerns about her son’s anger, dysregulation, anxiety and ADHD, and noted Emerson’s finding that occupational therapy had helped her son better regulate.

One week after the plan was put into place, the boy arrived at Ellsworth Elementary-Middle School already agitated, hit another student with a Pete the Cat stuffed animal and tried to leave the classroom, setting off a series of escalating interventions in which staff physically restrained him, relocated him against his will, and ultimately placed him in a small room where he stayed until his father arrived, according to incident reports shared with the Maine Morning Star.

The reports, which staff or administrators are required to write, offer an inside look at the behavior leading up to the restraint, how the situation escalated as staff restrained and secluded the boy, and how it continued for three hours, ending when Seth Emerson picked his son up from a seclusion room.

When the second grader initially tried to leave his classroom, two educators cornered the boy in a hallway nook, according to the report written by the school’s assistant principal. When he tried to push past them, they placed a mat between themselves and the child to block him from hitting them, and initiated the first of several physical holds. Each time he was released, he briefly calmed down but didn’t follow directions to sit still or stay in a designated spot, prompting a cycle: he would attempt to flee, staff would block him, the boy would resist, and staff would restrain him again, the report says.

About an hour in, while hiding in a locker, he asked to go home. A staff member moved him to a classroom, where he hid under a desk, retrieved rocks from his backpack, and threw them at staff, the report said. While the report described the projectiles as rocks, Emerson said her son had pebbles in his backpack.

Two hours in, staff called his parents. Even after he calmed down, they placed him in a seclusion room — referred to as a “quiet room” in the report — where they continued telling him to sit in a specific spot. When his father arrived, the boy walked out on his own, calm and cooperative.

Incidents like that continued for several more months for reasons that Emerson said did not warrant these measures: After he pulled books off shelves, punched a door, or refused to accompany staff to a quiet room, staff would put him in a physical hold or placed him in a room alone, according to a complaint Emerson filed with the district.

“I never condoned any of the behavior, whether he was throwing a book or whether he was yelling or running out of the classroom,” she said. “But he was not getting any education whatsoever last year. He was literally just going to school and being restrained and secluded.”

Frequent seclusions push an educator to quit

It’s not only students and their families who feel the trauma from restraints and seclusion. The educators who are told to put their hands on children feel it, too, several current and former teachers and education technicians told the Maine Morning Star.

Ashley Rose took a job as an ed tech at SeDoMoCha Elementary School in Dover-Foxcroft in August while working toward a degree in special education. But after months of witnessing staff placing students in empty rooms as they screamed and cried to be let out, she changed course.

In March, Rose switched her major, deciding she no longer wanted to become a teacher. On April 28, she resigned, writing to Superintendent Stacy Shorey that she had repeatedly raised concerns with supervisors about the school’s frequent use of seclusion, the lack of staff training on student behavior, and the absence of alternatives — without seeing meaningful change.

SeDoMoCha Elementary School has “quiet rooms” located within special education classrooms — which Rose described as 10-by-6-foot rooms with no windows. Some have benches and one light, while others are entirely empty, she said. All the doors have windows in them so staff can monitor students.

In her 10 years of working in special education, she has never seen such frequent use of quiet rooms, Rose said.

In December, Rose found herself participating in her first seclusion. The student she was working with wasn’t physically aggressive, just loud, and Rose’s plan had been to escort her into the special education classroom — not the quiet room — to help her calm down.

The student went with her voluntarily but was crying, she said. When they got to the classroom, another staff member who had worked at the school longer said it was part of that student’s behavior plan to go to the quiet room.

“That wasn’t my plan,” Rose said. “That room scares me just looking at it as an adult.”

As the student became more agitated, Rose said her own anxiety rose. If the student didn’t calm down, the other employee told Rose she had to shut the door. Rose complied, and then her colleague told her to hold the door shut with her foot to keep the student inside, she said.

Inside the room, the student began having what appeared to be an anxiety attack and threatened to break the window. She calmed down after about 20 minutes, and Rose let her out. Rose said she was not directed to file an incident report, nor was she told if someone else in the district did, despite the requirement in state law that districts document every seclusion.

Over the holiday break that followed, Rose said she had trouble sleeping. “All I can think about is the student I put in that room,” she said. “School should be their safe place, and these students were not feeling safe.”

Shorey, the superintendent, said staff members are required to report every incident, but she did not know about the particular incident Rose described. Special Education Director Sue Terrill said it’s possible that a staff member other than Rose wrote a report, but the district was unable to locate any documentation of that event.

The district trains employees in safety care — crisis management and prevention practices — Terrill said. It is open to other trainings, too, she said, including one that Rose brought to Terrill’s attention in February offered by the Maine nonprofit Lives in the Balance, which other districts have used to dramatically reduce their reliance on restraint and seclusion.

Quiet rooms present a gray area

Rose said she saw staff members keep students in seclusion rooms even when they were calm, using those same rooms for a variety of reasons beyond seclusion, which is banned or strictly regulated in at least seven states, according to the MOST Policy Initiative, a Missouri nonprofit. Maine came close to banning the rooms in 2021, but the final version of the law was amended to allow their use in emergencies.

Rose said she saw staff place students in quiet rooms to calm down after acting out, and then not allow them to exit for 20 minutes after they calmed down. If the seclusion happened at the end of the school day, sometimes the student would be expected to return to the quiet room the next day, she said.

Terrill recalled Rose raising this as an issue but denied keeping students in the rooms after they calmed down and no longer met the legal threshold for confinement.

But the district does use these rooms as timeout spaces, either by student choice or by staff direction, Terrill confirmed. Often, Terrill said, staff members are positioned outside the rooms, as they would be in a seclusion incident, but the student is typically free to leave the room, which is not the case in a seclusion.

Sometimes, the door is open, or a student can choose to shut the door with a staff member standing outside, she said.

“It can be the same room used if the student was in seclusion,” she said. “But if they’re taking a break because of something that happened, and that’s being used as a break space, the student might continue to work in there until they’re ready to go back to the classroom.”

Like RSU 68 in Dover-Foxcroft, districts across Maine also use seclusion rooms as quiet spaces, according to Ben Jones, a former Disability Rights Maine attorney who now works for Lives in the Balance.

“I think it’s actually more the rare case that the school is like, ‘We’re going to build this room and we’re going to call it the seclusion room, and it’s going to be used just for seclusion,’” he said.

If a student has voluntarily shut themselves in the seclusion room with a staff member outside and is free to go at any time, it would not count as seclusion under Maine law, he said. But if staff members ask students to stay in there to complete their work, as Rose described, whether it would count as a seclusion that districts are required to report to the state is “open to interpretation,” Jones said.

“The overall thing is, the kid is not learning, not in the classroom, in something that could easily turn into seclusion,” he said. “It’s inappropriate at best and potentially illegal if it’s an unrecorded seclusion.”

When are students and staff in “imminent danger”?

Education technicians like Rose — aides who often work with students one-on-one or in small groups — are often the ones handling student outbursts or potential violence, said Greg Kavanaugh, who spent 13 years working as an ed tech and special education teacher in Biddeford, Portland, and Yarmouth.

Ed techs are among the lowest-paid professionals in education, and — including on behavior management techniques.

“They’re having to make good decisions about when to restrain, when to seclude, and their judgment is going to be really hard because they’re so stressed, overwhelmed, underpaid,” Kavanaugh said. “That just leads to more mistakes, more lapses in judgment.”

In his experience, Kavanaugh said, restraint and seclusion were consistently treated as last-resort measures — used only in extreme situations.

Staff received training on managing student behavior, they debriefed after restraints and seclusions, and they held regular conversations with parents, he said, which disability rights advocates recommend as best practices.

But working in a functional life skills program with students with moderate to severe disabilities, Kavanaugh said, deciding whether to restrain or seclude a child was never easy despite clear protocols in place. Even when a student threw a laptop across the room or hit him, he had to determine whether the behavior posed an imminent danger of serious injury that would require medical intervention beyond first aid — the standard in Maine law — and only intervene physically if it did. He also had to keep calm if students hit him, he said, because that still did not meet the legal standard.

Every time he did restrain or seclude a child, it stayed with him long after. He said he often questioned whether it had been the right call, thought about how families would respond, and considered the lasting effects the practice might have on the student — and on himself.

“Anytime there was a hold, a restraint or a seclusion, you’re taking that home, and you’re thinking about that kid when you’re at home, trying to move on with your day,” he said. “I’m a pretty strong-willed person, but there are plenty of times I would quietly be in tears, or going home and having an extra glass of wine, because I’m just not processing it well in the aftermath.”

Other students in the classroom witnessing these incidents are also traumatized, Kavanaugh said.

“You see the terror on their classmates’ faces, and you feel bad for the kid in a certain way because this is going to hurt their relationships,” he said.

But talking to parents afterward would always make him feel better, Kavanaugh said, because parents of students with disabilities are often dealing with similar behavior challenges at home.

District response to a parental complaint

Emerson, the parent in Ellsworth, complained to the school board, Superintendent Amy Boles, and the Maine Department of Education in August 2024, alleging that staff members had not met the legal threshold for using restraint and seclusion so often on her son.

Boles wrote back in October, saying in cases where Emerson’s son was hitting, scratching, and kicking staff, “it is my conclusion that active behavior like this toward another person does create an ‘imminent danger’ that the other person could be sufficiently injured that he or she may need more than ‘routine first aid.’”

“The incident may not in fact have caused an injury requiring that level of care, but a reasonable and prudent person could reasonably conclude that this could occur,” Boles wrote in her letter, reviewed by Maine Morning Star.

But the investigation the district launched in response to Emerson’s complaint found that staff had improperly restrained and secluded her son in at least five of the 18 incidents to which his mother objected. Some incident reports were also vaguely written, Boles wrote, which was the case for the three-hour incident in October 2023 — making it difficult to determine whether restraints and seclusion were warranted.

Nonetheless, Boles concluded in her letter to Emerson that all staff need training on the proper use of restraint and seclusion, and she agreed the district should rely on the practice less often.

Boles declined to comment on the investigation or specific incidents, but said district staff have undergone an initial training with Lives in the Balance, and followup trainings are planned.

“Behavior is an issue across the board. I mean, it’s skyrocketing everywhere. It’s not just Ellsworth,” she said. “But we’re working really hard to try to be preventative before it gets to that extreme state, trying to teach staff day-to-day strategies to prevent the behavior before it escalates.”

Emerson said her son is still visibly shaken every time he passes by the school, or even when someone mentions the word “school” around him.

On April 23, she restraint and seclusion in public schools must stop. The day before, her son had said he was still afraid to go to school in person.

“His world has become so small since these events, he rarely leaves our home,” she said. “Everyone continues about their day, and yet I’m left to pick up the pieces.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.

Arizona Autism Charter Schools, whose founder Diana Diaz-Harrison has been tapped to oversee the education of children with disabilities in President Donald Trump’s second administration, has used controversial, potentially dangerous disciplinary practices on its students at an unusually high rate. 

In the 2020-21 academic year, the latest for which federal data is available, school staff physically restrained 41% of its students and put 20% in seclusion, which is defined by the U.S. Department of Education as the involuntary confinement of a child, typically in a locked room. That’s 50% higher than the rate at which students are restrained and confined nationally. 

For 35 years, the U.S. Government Accountability Office and have documented in which students as young as 4 were injured, traumatized or even killed while being isolated or held down — often in response to nonviolent behavior. In states that ban the practices, educators typically are allowed to intervene if there is imminent danger of serious physical injury to the student or to others.

Many states — including Arizona — have outlawed or severely curtailed the circumstances under which the practices are allowed. In 2017, federal education officials warned that in restraint and seclusion likely constitute discrimination. Eighty percent of U.S. students who are physically restrained have disabilities, as do 77% of those secluded.  

In 2019, then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to address inappropriate restraint and seclusion in U.S. schools. In January 2025, her outgoing successor, Miguel Cardona, called on states and school districts to entirely. 

At the time the data was collected, the charter network founded by Diaz-Harrison had two schools serving 283 students, 116 of whom were restrained and 57 secluded. Ninety-nine of the schools’ 146 K-5 students, or 68%, had been restrained.

Located in the same area served by the Arizona Autism Charter Schools, the 27,000-student Phoenix Union High School District restrained three students in 2020-21 and secluded none. The nearby Mesa Unified District, with more than 50,000 students, restrained 93 and secluded 67. 

In August 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, schools to reopen for students who had no other safe place to spend the day and to prioritize serving children with disabilities, many of whom had missed months of crucial special education services. Schools to in-person schooling on March 15, 2021.

Of Arizona’s 1 million K-12 students, 675 were restrained in 2020-21, as were 28,000 of 49 million children nationally. 

Ron Harrison, the interim CEO of Arizona Autism Charter Schools, noted that unlike most other schools, the student population of Arizona Autism Charter is comprised almost entirely of children who have autism or learning differences.  

“Our intervention rates may be higher than traditional schools because of the distinct student population we serve and our practice to err on the side of reporting every applicable incident, regardless of how minor,” wrote Harrison in a statement. “By comparison, underreporting of similar interventions is rampant nationally – especially among large school districts – and has been the subject of federal scrutiny.”

Harrison added that independently tracked parent satisfaction scores at Arizona Autism Charter schools “have never fallen below 92%” and most recently were higher than 97%.

Diaz-Harrison, who has taken a leave from Arizona Autism Charter to focus on her new federal role, did not respond to requests for comment.

Since 2020-21, Arizona Autism Charter Schools has grown to five schools enrolling nearly 1,000 students. The schools use a controversial intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, that is opposed by many autistic adults as coercive and traumatizing. Created by the researcher behind LGBTQ conversion therapy, ABA attempts to train children to appear and behave like their neurotypical peers. It is widely depicted as the gold standard despite scant independent evidence of its effectiveness and mounting research documenting its harms. 

For a story announcing her appointment as the U.S. Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for special education and rehabilitative services, Diaz-Harrsion provided a statement to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ applauding the approach. “For the autism community, specifically, many families seek schools that integrate positive behavioral strategies,” she said. “The evidence supporting behavioral therapy is extensive and well-established. It has been endorsed by the U.S. surgeon general and the American Academy of Pediatrics as an effective, research-backed approach for individuals with autism.”     

In 2010, the Association for Behavior Analysis International opposing “inappropriate” restraint and seclusion but supporting the interventions when used by ABA practitioners as part of a formal plan. 

“When used in the context of a behavior intervention plan, restraint in some cases serves both a protective and a therapeutic function,” the organization wrote. “These procedures can reduce risks of injury and can facilitate learning opportunities that support appropriate behavior.”

There is that restraint and seclusion have a positive effect on student behavior. Indeed, if the discipline is traumatizing, a child can manifest new behaviors, according to guidance from federal education officials.

“All of our teachers and staff members who interact with students are specially trained,” Harrison said. “When a behavioral intervention is required to ensure the safety of students or staff members, we follow strict protocols which are never punitive and always designed to de-escalate the situation.”

Federal education officials have school systems to train staff on de-escalation and to institute protocols for addressing inappropriate behavior without resorting to punitive measures. When a student with a disability is restrained or secluded, U.S. officials warn, it could mean that their special education plan may be insufficient or not providing the right services.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated on May 15, 2025 to include statements from Ron Harrison, the interim CEO of Arizona Autism Charter Schools.

Now, however, some advocates say they fear that the task force’s law enforcement majority wants to shut down discussion of the issues at the core of the raging debate over the perils of stationing cops in schools. 

At the task force’s first meeting, in June, the executive director of the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training announced that the group would not discuss prone restraints or use of force, says Khulia Pringle, the task force member who represents Solutions Not Suspensions. Her coalition consists of community groups including disability and racial equity advocates.

“He said, ‘This is not a philosophical debate and we are not going to go beyond the substance of the statute,’ ” Pringle quoted Erik Misselt as saying. “I thought for sure we would get into the weeds of what we were there for.”

The board, which licenses law enforcement officers, is responsible for overseeing development of the model policy. 

The , Pringle and other advocates say, requires the committee to address a number of issues pertaining to the use of school resource officers, whose campus presence dramatically increases student arrests. They believed the model policy — to be adopted by law enforcement agencies whose officers work in schools — would specify when police can act in schools and lay out alternatives to the use of force.

The task force is scheduled to hold the second of four planned meetings July 18 and to agree on a finished model policy in mid-September. So far, members of the group have been given little research on policies guiding police presence in schools, causing some advocates to fear the end product won’t reflect best practices.

“The public was told this was sorted out, that children would be protected by a model policy,” says Erin Sandsmark, another Solutions Not Suspensions leader. “To say you can’t do the job without holding a child face-down in a dangerous hold seems extreme to us.” 

By law, the task force had to include representatives of the police licensing board and five other law enforcement organizations, four statewide education organizations and three community groups — one of them representing special education students. Maren Christenson, executive director of the Multicultural Autism Action Network — one of two disability-focused organizations in the Solutions Not Suspensions coalition — is concerned about the lack of representation for the students most impacted.

“We know who is on the receiving end of most types of disciplinary actions in schools,” she says, “especially students of color with disabilities. Limiting their representation in this discussion doesn’t help.”

The U.S. Department of Education has called for banning prone restraints, and the Justice Department in 2022 issued for in-school policing. 

More recently, the Government Accountability Office released research that draws on federal arrest data, which revealed dramatic disparities by race, gender and disability status. At schools where police are stationed, teachers and administrators often call on them to deal with student misbehavior, the report notes, dramatically ratcheting up arrest rates. 

In the wake of Floyd’s 2020 murder, numerous districts throughout the country — including Minneapolis — stopped stationing police in schools. In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers banned the use of in-school prone restraints altogether. 

But with election year politics already in play, in-school policing remained a red-hot topic. Although they control the state House of Representatives, state Senate and governorship, Minnesota Democrats have straddled a rural-urban divide on policing since Floyd’s death. After in-school prone restraints were outlawed, at least 16 suburban and rural law enforcement agencies pulled officers out of schools, arguing that they could not work if they were not allowed to use the holds. 

Fearing the controversy would cost the party seats in November, this year Democrats stripped the ban from state law but added detailed requirements regarding training, data collection and the creation of a model policy. Among other things, the law says the policy must prohibit calling on cops to enforce school rules or assist educators with discipline; specify de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to the use of force; create a timeline for school resource officers to complete extensive, new training on juvenile issues also called for under the law; and protect student data. 

Debate during the legislative session was hampered by a near-total lack of data on police presence in Minnesota schools. No one tracks how many school systems have contracts with law enforcement agencies, how many officers are stationed in schools and how often they intervene with students — much less which ones and why.

“Reporters kept asking, ‘Do you know how many kids are restrained?’ ” says Pringle, the only person of color on the task force. “And [lawmakers] kept saying, ‘That’s one of the things we will now know.’ ”

It’s not clear to her or other advocates present at the group’s first meeting if data will be collected or whether any agency will track law enforcement contracts with school systems.

Disability advocates nationwide for years have campaigned to outlaw prone restraints, which were linked to between 1993 and 2018. In 2015, Minnesota passed a law prohibiting school staff from using the hold and requiring education and school leaders to reduce other types of physical holds and seclusion, which are used disproportionately on children with disabilities. 

Though COVID-related school closures skew the data, the use of physical restraints involving students with disabilities in schools fell from 19,000 in the 2017-18 school year to some 10,000 in 2021-22. Black and Native American children are disproportionately likely to experience restraint, as are autistic students and those with emotional behavioral disorders. 

In preparation for the July 18 meeting, participants were asked to submit examples of model policies for discussion. Solutions Not Suspensions submitted the only guidance to go beyond the law’s basic scope, according to a meeting preparation packet emailed to participants. Created by the American Civil Liberties Union, it contains detailed information on many of the topics raised by the legislature.

The ACLU document distinguishes between disciplinary misconduct, which should be handled by school staff, and criminal behavior requiring police intervention. School resource officers can’t be called in when a student is disruptive or involved in a fight that doesn’t involve a weapon or result in injury, for example. The rules also require police to collect data on their in-school activities and make it publicly available. 

Other models submitted include a policy drafted by the Minnesota School Boards Association and manuals used by a school system in Georgia that operates its own police department. The Georgia materials do not address prone restraint, instead defining different levels of physical force, ranging from benign redirection to lethal steps. 

Like most school board organizations, the Minnesota association typically creates policies for its members, many of whom serve on boards of districts that are too small to generate their own. So that it can be used in many contexts, this type of model policy is typically very general. simply reiterates the main points of the new state statute without addressing alternative strategies. 

The task force will use the school board policy as a starting point, law enforcement board officials said in an email sent to members along with an agenda for their July meeting. The group is supposed to have a finished model policy by September, after which the law enforcement board will decide whether to adopt it. 

In an emailed response to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ’s request for comment about advocates’ concerns, Misselt wrote, “All members of the working group have the opportunity to discuss their opinions and viewpoints during the meetings and all participants are expected to do so.” 

Lawmakers who voted both for and against allowing police to use prone restraints said they have not yet received updates on the development of the model policy and thus can’t comment. Disability advocates said they expect several legislators will be present at the task force’s next meeting.

In the end, Pringle is concerned that the task force won’t have time to come up with a nuanced recommendation. “I’m just confused as to how in the world this is supposed to work,” she says. “It feels like whatever happens in this model policy is going to be focused on the adults.”

A recent investigation found a Wisconsin school failed to comply with several seclusion and restraint policies, including ensuring sufficient training, properly documenting seclusion and restraint incidents, debriefing after incidents, notifying the student’s parent and removing a lock on the door of the seclusion room.

The investigation, conducted by Daniel Unertl, an attorney with Attoles Law, looked into the treatment in the fall of 2023 of a first-grade student at Weston Elementary School — a small school of about 140 in rural Cazenovia, Wisconsin. It was initiated by the school board after Candice Corey, the student’s mother, issued a complaint that her son was the victim of physical harm perpetrated by staff members and the district failed to properly document and communicate the instances of seclusion and restraint.

Corey said her son, whose name is being withheld for privacy reasons, has been traumatized by the experiences.

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“His whole demeanor is different,” Corey told the Wisconsin Examiner. “He used to want to go across town to his friend’s house. He doesn’t do that anymore. He used to take the dogs to the park or take the dogs for a walk. He doesn’t do that anymore.” Of her son’s change in personality, she said, “They dimmed a light that they didn’t need to.”

Seclusion — the forced confinement of a student in a room or area — and physical restraint — restraining a student’s body movements — are practices used in schools to respond to student behavior. State laws in Wisconsin require that the practices are only used when students present a “clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety” of themselves or others and when it is the least restrictive intervention possible. The law lays out other requirements if the practices are being used.

The practices are disproportionately used with elementary school students who have disabilities and have been highly criticized in the last few decades due to the physical and mental effects on children. Wisconsin adopted its laws regulating the practices  in 2010 and 2019 to help limit their use and mitigate the potential harm. Advocates against the use of the practices say problems remain when it comes to ensuring schools comply with the law.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, an attorney representing Corey and a long-time disability rights advocate, said the investigation’s findings and recommendations are notable. He said that often when schools conduct such investigations, they hire the same law firms that usually represent their schools, which is a conflict of interest. This happened in Corey’s case as well, but the investigator found several of the concerns and recommended discipline for the superintendent and the special education director.

“I have yet to see that for a so-called independent investigation conducted by a school district’s attorney in all my time,” Spitzer-Resnick said. “And I think it’s a wake up call, hopefully, to other school districts to get serious when they do investigations of abuse by staff and school.”

Spitzer-Resnick said he also appreciates that the school didn’t go into “defense and denial mode” as many school districts do when there are accusations about seclusion and restraint. He added that the report helped ensure this.

Insufficient training

Corey’s son, who is autistic and deals with ADHD, had a relatively positive start to the 2023-24 school year, according to witnesses interviewed in the investigation. He had been attending Weston Elementary School since the 2020-2021 school year as a 4-year-old kindergarten student and then completed two years of kindergarten before entering the first grade.

In mid-October of 2023, however, his behavioral problems started to increase and as a result, he started receiving instruction mostly in a dedicated special education room. After this, staff began using seclusion and restraint more often to respond to his behavior.

Wisconsin state law lays out several requirements for when seclusion and restraint are used, including requirements that secluded students must be supervised; must have access to a bathroom, drinking water, necessary medication and scheduled meals; must be in a room that can’t be locked and is free of objects or fixtures that could injure them and may only be secluded for as long as necessary to resolve the risk. In the case of restraint, some of the policies in the statute include that the degree of force and duration should not exceed what is “reasonable and necessary” to resolve the risk and it should not constitute corporal punishment. It also includes requirements for steps the school must take after a seclusion or restraint occurs. Several of those requirements were not complied with in this case, according to the report.

Corey’s complaint alleged that her son was the victim of physical harm. Her son did come home with a scratch from three nails on his forearm caused by a paraprofessional, though the investigation found that it was an accident. He also had bruises consistent with being grabbed inappropriately.

The investigation did not reveal evidence of corporal punishment. However, it did find several other deficiencies and failures.

Training was one of the first issue areas.

State law requires at least one staff member in each school where restraint might be used to be trained, and that only trained staff members are supposed to conduct any seclusions unless there is an emergency and a trained individual isn’t available. The Department of Public Instruction within a school as it’s helpful in a situation where restraint is used to “have more than one trained person available to ensure safety for students and staff alike.”

Before December 2023, Molly Kasten, the director of curriculum, instruction and special education for the district, was the only staff member with up-to-date training. She was also in charge of ensuring staff were trained. Multiple staff members who regularly interacted with the student, including two paraprofessionals, did not have up-to-date training, including when they engaged in the use of seclusion and restraint.

The investigation noted that, given prior experiences with the student, it wasn’t unforeseeable that there was the potential for seclusion and restraints, and “Kasten, as the administrator in charge of seclusion and restraint training, should have anticipated this need and ensured an adequate number of staff received proper training.”

Staff had, as a result, also received little to no training in how to fill out the reports — another area where failings were apparent.

Incomplete documentation, lack of notification

The investigator reviewed a total of 14 seclusion and restraint reports the district had on file. Three of the incidents happened on Nov. 8, 2023. Three other incidents occurred on Nov. 13, 2023. One happened on each of the following dates: Nov. 16, Nov. 17, Nov. 20, Nov. 21. Dec. 12 and three others on Dec. 14.

Only one of the 14 was properly documented.

“In sum, nearly all the reports examined by this reviewer were inadequate,” the investigation states. “The reports in some cases are so deficient that it is virtually impossible for a third party reviewer to ascertain whether the report was filled out for a restraint or a seclusion. Despite numerous witnesses indicating that restraint did in fact occur, not a single report explicitly indicates the use of restraint.”

When the incidents were occurring, the seclusion room was also out of compliance as a lock remained on the door. It wasn’t removed until after the investigation.

In addition, at least one incident was not documented at all during the student’s second year of kindergarten in 2022-23. Instances of the principal dragging him down the hallway, technically a restraint, were also not documented.

The school may have failed to report the instance in kindergarten to the Department of Public Instruction as zero instances of seclusion and restraint were reported in .

On at least two occasions, Superintendent Gary Syftestad dragged the student down the hallway at the school. He claimed the student saw it as “fun” as did other staff members who witnessed the dragging. In the second instance of this happening, Syftestad dragged him by the ankle.

The investigation admonished Syftestad for his actions.

“Regardless of a student’s perception of this type of incident, dragging a student down the hall, be it by a hand or by the foot, is incredibly inappropriate and unprofessional conduct from any staff member, much less from the superintendent,” the investigation stated. “As the District’s educational leader, Syftestad is held to the highest possible standard. … He is supposed to be the trusted leader who students can come to with any questions or concerns, and witnessing the superintendent drag one of your classmates down the hall of the school would negatively impact students’ ability to view Syftestad as a trusted adult.” Further, it stated that the dragging would “model negative behaviors that staff members should not be emulating and may cause staff to lose any trust or respect” that the staff have in Syftestad.

The investigation also said that those who witnessed the dragging, including the principal, “should have objected to any instance of Syftestad dragging a child, no matter the context, and doing so demonstrates a significant lapse in judgement.”

The investigation called the failures “concerning” given the clear guidance in state statute and school board policy and the serious nature of seclusion and restraint.

In addition to official documentation and reporting, within three days of an incident, parents are supposed to receive written reports from the school. Corey received inadequate notification, according to the investigation.

“Corey was only provided with the reports when she requested them. The reports arrived late and incomplete,” the report stated.

Corey said she wasn’t made aware of the complete extent of her son’s situation until December when she started asking questions. Those questions were prompted after her son came home with scratches on his forearm and she heard from some that he was being dragged down the hallway by the superintendent.

“[My son] had been telling me these things, but I didn’t — I didn’t believe it,” Corey said. “I would get a random call every now and then. Just ‘Oh, he had a rough day.’ But I was never informed they were putting him in a seclusion room or physically restraining him until December.”

In December, she pulled him out of the school.

School responds, student’s education in flux

Spitzer-Resnick said he suspects the Weston school district is not the only school district in the state with training, documentation and reporting issues. He noted that he had concerns when the laws were being created about staff being trained to prevent incidents and appropriately document them and whether there would be funding to support that. He said this case also brings up the question of whether schools are accurately reporting — an ongoing concern of his.

School districts in Wisconsin have been required to report data to the Department of Public Instruction each year since the 2020-21 school year and many show up as having zero instances of seclusion and restraint.

“When we see school districts with low numbers of seclusion and restraint, can we safely assume that that means they’re really not doing it very much, if at all? And the sad answer is no,” Spitzer-Resnick said. “We can’t, because there isn’t good auditing at DPI’s level.”

Spitzer-Resnick said he recognizes that DPI doesn’t have the resources to audit every school district in Wisconsin, but said even auditing 10 or 20 would send a message to other districts about ensuring they are reporting incidents and complying with state policy. There is nothing in statute guiding DPI on what to do with the data it receives from schools, and currently, DPI focuses on reaching out to districts that report high numbers of seclusions and restraints.

The investigation recommended several actions for the district, including training for several staff members and disciplinary action for Syftestad and Kasten. In a letter attached to the investigation report, the school board president Carrie Heiking detailed the actions that the school will be taking.

Those actions include reviewing and making necessary corrections to the school’s 2022-23 seclusion and restraint report, training and certifying essential staff in seclusion and restraint practices, bringing in an outside consultant to ensure the seclusion room is in compliance, developing a professional development training plan for all staff, training employees who may be involved in a seclusion and restraint situation in documentation and notification requirements, maintaining a training log, developing a best practice protocol for debriefing incidents and reviewing mandatory staff training requirements.

Heiking wrote that the board also reviewed the recommendations for staff discipline and would be taking “significant” actions, though the specific actions weren’t disclosed for confidentiality reasons.

“On behalf of the Board of Education, we hope that this message gives you the sense of closure we believe you deserve,” Heiking wrote in the letter attached to the report.

The Examiner contacted Heiking to ask about the investigation and the district’s ongoing response. In an email, Heiking said the district “does not comment on matters where the privacy of our students or staff members are concerned and protected by law.”

Heiking also referred the Examiner to administrative reports related to seclusion and restraint, which are presented to the board during open meetings.

A June report provided to the school board by Kasten about training noted that the goal is to have all staff trained in nonviolent crisis intervention, and that at one point the district had trained 85% of staff.

“At this point, special education staff, administration and some paraprofessionals are correctly certified and trained,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, Syftestad, who has worked in education for 30 years, is retiring and the school board is in the process of hiring a new superintendent. He said in a statement to the board that “the time has come for me to focus on my health and my family.”

Heiking said the board wishes him well in his retirement and is “very appreciative of his dedication and leadership over the last several years.”

Spitzer-Resnick emphasized that the seclusion and restraint has heavily affected  the student’s education, and his family is  still working to make up for that harm. The student has started attending a school outside of Madison — about an hour and a half drive away from his home.

“There [was] no education happening” for much of the school year for the student in his former school, Spitzer-Resnick said.

“And we’re still in a place after this, granted, this very small school district basically said, ‘OK, you know, I guess we have to send him somewhere else because… We don’t know what to do,’” he continued, paraphrasing the school’s reaction.

Corey, for now, remains reluctant to send her son back to the district even with the proposed actions from the district.

“The changes would be great if they’re actually going to follow through and do well, but I will not let him return up there until there’s a staff change,” Corey said. “This went on for almost three months of you restraining a special needs child down the hallway to throw him in a room by himself. Nobody thought they should probably report that to me.”

She added that she appreciates her tight-knit rural community and hopes her son can go back to school there one day.

“But at the same time, is this wound ever going to heal?” Corey said. “Even when we drive by there, he doesn’t — he doesn’t look at the school. He doesn’t talk about the school. If we see somebody from the school out in public, he runs.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

Hundreds of Connecticut special education students who have attended  have been subjected to restraints and seclusion, teachers without certification and improper services, according to a scathing report released Tuesday by the Office of the Child Advocate and Disability Rights Connecticut.

In one academic year, there were more than 1,200 reports of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools, the report states.

Connecticut Child Advocate Sarah Eagan said a two-year investigation of six schools in Hartford, New London, Wallingford and other towns found “an alarming lack of oversight, systemic failings and often flagrant disregard for statutory requirements and state standards that protect the educational rights and safety of children.”

“Practices routinely fall short of state laws, education regulations, best practices, or all three. Changes need to be put in place without delay,” Eagan said.

High Road is one of the Connecticut’s largest state-approved private special education providers, and it primarily serves children from low-income school districts and receives millions in public funds annually, according to the report. 

The 57-page report said the state Department of Education, along with the school districts that sent students to High Road schools, failed to visit the campuses regularly and did not ensure compliance with the federal . 

“Many of the students at High Road Schools were grossly underserved both in terms of educational planning and service delivery,” the report said. “The investigation revealed widespread student disengagement and chronic absenteeism across High Road locations, failure to adequately assess and support students’ educational needs through individualized service delivery and perhaps most alarmingly, gross deficiencies in the number of certified special education teachers and other credentialed educational staff working with children and systemic failure to ensure and/or document that staff had undergone employment checks and criminal and child welfare background checks.”

About 316 students were enrolled at six of eight High Road schools in Connecticut during the 2021-22 academic year, with the student body being made up of about 80% boys and 70% students of color from across 38 Connecticut school districts.

Eighty High Road students, or about 25%, were outsourced from Hartford Public Schools, making the capital city’s public school district the “largest district consumer of High Road services,” according to the report.

The state Department of Education said it “vigorously disagree[d] with the conclusions” of the report, adding that the department has been, and is, “attentive to concerns that are brought forth to the State’s attention and engages in off cycle monitoring reviews.”

“During the period of investigation, from 2022 through February 2024, the CSDE received no complaints from parents, from guardians, from students, from attorneys, from parent advocates, or from local or regional school districts regarding High Road schools,” a spokesperson from the department said. “Of note, the CSDE’s Special Education Division annually receives approximately 1,000 filings in the form of hearing requests, mediation requests, or compliance complaints, yet during the period of time covered in the OCA/DRCT Report, not one of those thousands of filings pertained to High Road schools.”

A spokesperson from High Road told The Connecticut Mirror in an emailed statement that the report did “not accurately reflect the academic and behavioral supports at our schools” and that “over the course of two years, High Road Schools provided comprehensive responses that outlined these inaccuracies, as well as highlighted the specific improvements we implemented as part of this process.”

OCA, , and DRCT, , investigated the following campuses: High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle, High Road School of Hartford High School, High Road B.E.S.T. Academy of Wallingford, High Road School of Fairfield County in Norwalk, High Road School of New London and High Road School of Windham County in Killingly from March 2022 to March 2024 through a series of reviews of educational files, classroom observations and interviews. 

DRCT also visited High Road School of Wallingford Primary School and High Road School of Wallingford High School but did not collect data or records, the report states.

Restraint and seclusion 

Connecticut leads the country in its placement of students with disabilities in “separate schools,” according to the report. 

Most are students of color.

In 2021-22, there were more than 1,200 reported incidents of students being restrained or secluded in High Road schools. Nearly 550 of those incidents were reported from High Road School of Hartford Primary/Middle School, the report states.

“It is concerning that students would be isolated in such a manner and with such frequency. Isolation without adequate and required efforts to address students’ needs also raise serious legal questions under the ADA,” the report said, adding that students were often taken out of classrooms into “time-out rooms” where they weren’t allowed to leave.

Jennifer Hoffman, assistant superintendent for special education and pupil services in Hartford, said  responding to the report that the district has worked OCA and DRCT to continue working toward becoming a “trauma-responsive system” and is in “collective acknowledgment that more works needs to be done, between external systems, to reduce the stressors for families that are sending students to school.”

Hoffman’s letter highlighted efforts to expand special education services and monitoring and oversight of students.

The district declined to provide further comment when contacted by the CT Mirror.

Staffing problems

The investigation found that almost half of the teachers employed at High Road did not have adequate teacher certification from the state of Connecticut or did not undergo proper background checks.

The report found that:

• “In the Windham County Program, 6 out of 8 educational staff had not had DCF background checks;
• In the New London Program, High Road failed to demonstrate that it had verified employment histories, including any concerns of prior student maltreatment, as required by state law;
• In the Fairfield County Program, High Road had not conducted a DCF or employee background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Hartford-Primary, High Road had not conducted a DCF background check for approximately half of the staff;
• At Wallingford-BEST program, High Road conducted background checks for the majority, but not all of staff working with children.”

The report also said that the Department of Education had previously found that High Road “had not been consistent in conducting background checks” but never followed up.

“State records do not indicate further follow up by CSDE to ensure that corrective actions were implemented and sustained. OCA/DRCT’s investigation found that despite previous complaints, warnings, and directives and despite clear state law obligations and even contractual requirements … High Road failed to demonstrate that it consistently conducts background checks for employees working with children,” the report said.

The report added that school administrators “did not communicate staffing gaps to [local educational agencies]” and that data from both High Road and the state Department of Education “reflect a high vacancy rate for certified special education teachers and lack of adequate documentation for substitute teachers and individuals with ‘durational permits,’” including a “heavy reliance on long-term substitute teachers” who may not be “appropriately credentialed and approved” by the state.

There was also no documentation of physical education, art or music teachers at these schools. Nurses were not employed at all buildings, according to the report. 

Lack of individualized programming in the classroom

The report highlighted several deficiencies with student individualized education plans, or IEPs, and a lack of , which are used to determine the cause of certain behaviors and how to address them.

An analysis of 30 student records showed “little evidence … of individualized instruction, and general program descriptions refer only to a curriculum comprised of ‘four instructional rotations during which students are assessed academically, gain self-regulation skills, learn with district-aligned academic curriculums and utilize integrated technology,’” the report said.

“Records examined included inconsistent information, lacked evidence of comprehensive evaluations, individualized or personalized instructional or behavioral strategies, and did not indicate that progress or failure to progress were regularly reviewed within programs. Across sites there was an apparent lack of access to related services such as clinical/psychological consultation or service,” the report continued, adding that several campuses did not have occupational and speech language therapy “consistent with descriptions of students’ previous developmental, social/emotional, or educational histories.”

The investigation also found that “almost none of the students” received functional behavioral assessments (FBAs) or behavior intervention plans (BIPs) at several campuses. 

Nor did the schools have a board-certified behavior analyst on staff.

“High Road locations all employ school social workers and offer individual and/or group counseling. However, out of 30 student records reviewed by investigators, there were only two BIPs,” the report said. “Student data and individual student records also indicate frequent use of restraint and seclusion without adequate evaluation and response.”

The report illustrated several instances where students required behavioral help, but there was “little to no individualization.” It also illustrated when student behavioral needs were ignored and played out in the child’s academics later.

“Student A was placed at the Hartford Primary-Middle School program in Grade 3, at age 10, with a BIP created at his previous public school. Yet a program review later that year indicated he was performing below grade level due to a lack of access to education based on extended timeouts, raising questions about the degree to which his BIP was reflective of his current needs,” the report said. “In additional, Student A had multiple absences, slept for the whole day on multiple days waking only to eat lunch, and had significant academic delays. … Complex academic/behavioral/disengagement issues persisted from enrollment at High Road for 7 years without his needs being properly addressed.”

Other examples included a student who had 70 timeouts and seven restraints in her first year at High Road and a student with 69 restraints over a 15-month period and no BIP in his record. 

Disengaged students, unclear path forward

Almost 40% of students enrolled at High Road schools had 18 or more absences from school. Over 25% missed over 25 days of instruction, and 10% of all students missed over 50 days, according to the report.

But for students in the classroom, there were several instances where investigators “saw multiple students who were sleeping for prolonged periods during class and students who were completely disengaged from classroom activities.”

“Investigators consistently saw students who were left entirely to themselves during a 30-minute or even 45-minute class period, alone in a cubicle or at a computer, without any or only the briefest of interactions with a teacher or an aide,” the report said.

“During one observation, investigators observed a student sitting in a cubicle starting at the wall. The teacher approached him and spoke to him once during a 45-minute observation. He did not respond and no one else attempted to engage him during class,” the report added. “During an observation at the Fairfield High Road School, several students were observed sleeping, with investigators told that one of the students sleeps all the way up until the last period of the day to participate in science class.”

There were also several issues with progress monitoring and assessments, and inappropriate academic goals, the report said.

“Investigators were told [at the Windham County campus] that students’ progress is monitored daily, but the covering administrator (who was not certified as an administrator) told OCA that ‘students don’t have academic goals; they are here because of behavior,’” the report said.

Beyond academic trouble, the report said, the school did not provide transitional services for older students.

“For older students whose records were reviewed, access to special education until age 22 was terminated without clear transition plans or individualized programs that would provide options for post-secondary education or realistic development of vocational options and experiences, with appropriate social and mental health supports that could lead to successful transitions to adult life.”

Leadership failure and policy recommendations

OCA and DRCT criticized both the state Department of Education and local districts’ efforts to protect the students with disabilities enrolled in High Road schools.

The report said one district’s director of public services “had positive things to say about High Road schools and expressed no concerns” with High Road and that “other programs are worse.” He said there were no red flags around service hours.

However, investigators said that district had 13 students enrolled in High Road programs, and five students missed a combined 306 days of instruction without a BIP in place. 

“Although certain districts indicated they conducted site visits and records review following the letter, the incongruity between the districts’ stated satisfaction with the provision of services and OCA/DRCT investigative findings regarding staffing irregularities, lack of background checking, inadequate records, lack of related service delivery and individualized behavioral intervention plans, and chronic absenteeism is difficult to reconcile,” the report said.

The investigation found that many districts across the state did not conduct site visits and did not ask substantial questions about services or staffing.

“In response to questions about whether the districts conducted any observations of its students enrolled at the schools, only 3/18 districts responded affirmatively,” the report said. “Most districts were unable to provide the ‘names, positions, qualifications and/or any certification of all personnel providing instruction, including special education and related services, to the students while attending High Road.’ One district maintained that CSDE is responsible for ensuring that High Road schools have qualified staff employed.”

At a state level, the report said, the Department of Education had concerns about background checking and inadequate student records, but there were no findings of follow-ups or corrective action.

The report said the state Department of Education did not properly monitor and ensure compliance with federal and state law.

The final pages of the report recommended that state law be amended to “require strengthened CSDE oversight of state-approved private special education programs” and mandate transparency from the education department’s monitoring and enforcement of federal law.

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.

Wisconsin schools reported almost 6,000 seclusion and 7,000 restraint incidents with a majority of the incidents involving students with disabilities during the 2021-2022 school year, according to a by the state Department of Public Instruction.

A total of 1,920 students were involved in 5,908 reported seclusion incidents and 2,856 students were involved in 6,916 reported restraint incidents. The report released on Monday says DPI can infer from this that the same students have been subject to repeated seclusion or restraints.

“Reading this report and seeing these numbers can be difficult, but that is nothing in comparison with the emotional difficulty these numbers represent in the lived experiences of students and staff,” DPI Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement.

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Advocates with Disability Rights Wisconsin said the biggest takeaway from the report is that schools are doing a lot of damage with the practices and they need to figure out a way to cut down on their use.

“Every one of these numbers is a young person, and about three-quarters of them are young people with disabilities and the vast majority of them are young people in elementary schools,” said Joanne Juhnke, an advocacy specialist with Disability Rights Wisconsin. “Every one of those is a time when students were physically overpowered and or put into a room that they physically cannot escape from no matter how they try. Just think of the trauma of that.”

Seclusion is defined in state law as the “involuntary confinement of a pupil, apart from other pupils, in a room or area from which the pupil is physically prevented from leaving.” Doors cannot be locked, according to state statute. Physical restraint is defined as a restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to freely move their torso, arms, legs or head.

Students with disabilities were disproportionately involved in these incidents, continuing a trend seen in the last two reports by DPI. Despite comprising 14% of the statewide student body, 79% of seclusion incidents and 76% of restraints involved students with disabilities.

Advocates from Disability Rights Wisconsin said part of the reason that students with disabilities make up the majority of students involved is because they often have additional educational, sensory and emotional support needs that are not being met.

“We’re not meeting their needs early on,” said Mary Cerretti, an advocacy specialist. “We have fewer resources in the schools. We need increased mental health training [and] support. We need to intervene and meet the student’s needs prior to administration stepping in and escalating behaviors oftentimes.”

Juhnke agreed, adding that under-resourcing will continue to present a major challenge to implementing better practices for meeting disabled students’ needs. She pointed specifically to the 2023-25 budget, which raised special education reimbursements for public schools only slightly from 30% to 33.3% despite the state’s $7 billion budget surplus.

The DPI report states that “on a positive note” more than half of all public schools and private schools participating in the Special Needs Scholarship Program, a program that allows a student with a disability to receive a state-funded private school scholarship, did not report any incidents of seclusion or restraint.

Ceretti said it should be kept in mind that “oftentimes when we have students that are put in these special needs scholarship programs that have IEP [individualized educational plan], long before their behavior probably reaches the point of seclusion or restraint, they are sent back to their public school.”

Approximately 87% of seclusions and 78% of restraints occurred in Wisconsin elementary schools. The report states the data is troubling because “younger students’ K-12 experiences may be adversely shaped by these potentially traumatic experiences.”

Advocates said that elementary school children’s unfamiliarity with school environments, need to learn about appropriate behavior in school and small physical size are some of the reasons they are involved in more of these incidents.

“Thinking of restraint and seclusion as involved in physically overpowering,” Ceretti said. “Teachers and staff will think twice about trying to physically overpower somebody who is their size whereas the little ones, it’s no less traumatic for them, but it is a size differential that does not work in the student’s favor.”

Seclusion and restraint practices are allowed under state law when a student “presents a clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety of the pupil or others and it is the least restrictive intervention feasible.”

This is DPI’s third report on seclusion and restraint practices as the agency was required to begin collecting the data under a bipartisan law adopted in 2019 that aimed to limit use of the practices. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic when many students were not physically in school, Juhnke said has been difficult to get a clear picture of the law’s impact.

“Whatever the comparison of the numbers from year to year, at this point, the comparison is quite flawed because the numbers we have are across the COVID time,” Juhnke said. “So next year’s numbers will be more useful for trends thinking.”

The report states that DPI is “eager to collect and analyze data for the 2022-23 academic year to analyze how it compares to previous years.”

“We must continue our commitment to reducing the frequency of these incidents, and we must especially focus on using this information to better inform and improve our systems and best practices when working with our students with disabilities,” Underly said.

The report does not include information about the race, gender, age or other demographic information of students involved in incidents because it is not required by state law.

Jeff Spitzer-Resnick, an attorney who advocated for the , told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that he was “dismayed at the remarkable lack of leadership which DPI continues to show on this issue.”

Noting that DPI at one point opposed collecting data on the issue, Spitzer-Resnick said the agency failed in the report to examine the data by district and school and doesn’t provide anything more than general guidance to districts. Some resources for reducing the practices in schools are included at the end of the report.

DPI’s communications officer, Chris Bucher, said in an email that the agency does analyze the seclusion and restraint data and utilizes it in a variety of ways. He said one way is by identifying outlier data on the use of seclusion and restraint with students with disabilities.

Bucher said that the agency will assign a DPI consultant to work with a district with data showing unusually high use to identify a root cause. Once a cause has been identified, DPI will work to support the district through practices including training on state law and requirements, behavioral intervention plans and trauma-informed practices as well as identifying grant support to address behavioral needs.

Cerretti said that Disability Rights Wisconsin will look at the data to see how the group can offer support and advocacy to decrease restraint and seclusion incidents.

“We shouldn’t even allow it,” Cerretti said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Wisconsin Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Ruth Conniff for questions: info@wisconsinexaminer.com. Follow Wisconsin Examiner on and .

But legislation filed in the 2022 legislative session would prohibit school personnel from using those methods — potentially sparing students, especially those with disabilities, from a traumatic experience.

Only school resource officers, school safety officers, school guardians, or school security guards would still be able to use these restraints on students in grades 6 through 12 — but not younger children.

“The younger the child, the smaller they are,” said Rep. Rene Plasencia, the sponsor of HB 235. “It’s easier to use the right, the appropriate methods of making sure they don’t harm anyone else or harm themselves. As a child gets larger it becomes a little more challenging.”

Plasencia builds off previous legislative efforts to limit how teachers and other school personnel handle students who might be acting out in a dangerous manner.

“We want to make sure that no parent sends their child to school and the child comes home with bruises, or the child comes home with some kind of stress that could have been avoided,” Plasencia said Thursday at a House education subcommittee meeting.

The previous legislation dealing with this topic, which was sponsored by former Rep. Bobby DuBose, added language into Florida law that limited the use of restraints on students.

Under current Florida law, following DuBose’s successful push for the legislation, school personnel can only use restraints, physical or mechanical, on a student if they pose a serious risk to themselves or others as long as all other forms of behavioral intervention methods have been exhausted.

Florida law defines a mechanical restraint as the “use of a device that restricts a student’s freedom of movement.” This definition excludes devices recommended by a physician or a behavioral health specialist.

The restraint — such as handcuffs, zip-ties, straightjackets or other devices — is to be removed as soon as the dangerous behavior has dissipated and is not be used as discipline.

DuBose’s legislation also completely prohibited the use of seclusion on students, another behavioral intervention method that the former lawmaker said was “traumatic.”

Instead, current law calls on schools to develop crisis intervention plans for students who are restrained more than once a semester. The crisis intervention plan would be developed by a team that includes the student’s parent or guardian, school personnel, and physical and behavioral health professionals.

But with Placensia’s bill, school personnel would not be able to use mechanical restraints on students at all.

But physical restraint, meaning a school personnel using manual restraint techniques to restrict movement, would still be available as a last resort when all other behavior intervention methods haven’t worked.

Caitlyn Clibbon, is a public policy analyst with Disability Rights Florida, spoke at the Thursday committee meeting, saying that the disability advocacy group was in support of the bill.

“Using mechanical restraints on children is traumatic. It’s harmful,” Clibbon said during public testimony Thursday.

She continued:

“We get calls about this all the time. About the effects on the child after it happens to them. It’s very scary for them. A lot of them don’t understand what’s happening. They no longer trust their teacher or school. It can hold them back educationally – their ability to go to school and actually learn – because they’re in fear at school. And it can cause PTSD and things like that.”

The most recent discipline data is from the 2020-21 school year, with the Florida Department of Education reporting that there were 43 uses of mechanical restraints on students in that timespan.

Clibbon also spoke on the use of restraints by law enforcement.

“If there’s a true threat – Lord forbid, there’s a school shooter or something – they (SROs, etc.) can absolutely restrain those kids and make sure everything is safe,” Clibbon said.

She continued:

“If a kid escalates to a point where they’re actually being physically violent, now we’re talking about something else – we’re talking about crime, possibly a crime.”

At the committee meeting, Rep. Plasencia noted that he has been a teacher in the past, and his official page on the Florida House of Representatives notes that he is also known as “Coach P.” He is a Republican who represents part of Brevard and Orange counties.

He said he taught social studies for mainstream students, and while he was exposed to students with disabilities in his school, he didn’t “really understand it” until a nephew was diagnosed with autism.

“Having seen the impacts of the right behavioral therapies can mean for these children and the families, and when the schools implement the right trainings for their instructors and their paraprofessionals, and they allow for the therapist to be a part of that holistic care for that child… that has made a huge difference in his life and for children all over our state and all over our country,” he said to committee members Thursday.

“It brings us closer to making sure that all children have the ability to be successful as they grow, have the ability to learn, and have the ability to a life of independence,” Plasencia said.

The bill passed 17-0 in a roll call vote and has several more steps to go to get full approval from the House and Senate.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .

Over the last several decades, the number of police stationed inside public schools has exploded, often with much fanfare in the wake of a mass school shooting. But that could soon change.

After a Minneapolis cop murdered George Floyd last year, dozens of districts nationwide did what student activists have been demanding for years and broke up with the police. Now, Democratic lawmakers aim to eliminate a mechanism that’s long encouraged educators to place police officers inside their buildings: A big pot of federal cash.

The , reintroduced in June, would prohibit the government from using federal funds to hire, recruit or station police on K-12 campuses and instead creates a grant program providing billions of dollars for schools to hire support staff, like psychologists and social workers. It’s one of two bills being promoted this year by Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, a concept that highlights how harsh school discipline policies can push students, particularly youth of color, into the criminal justice system.

“We’ve got to draw the line, at the federal level at least, and say ‘From here on out, the money that the federal government spends should be spent on creating safe, productive school environments,” Murphy, who introduced the legislation, said during a recent press conference. “And that happens by investing in these kids through counseling, through nurses, through social workers, through psychologists, not through more police officers.”

In an exclusive interview with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, Murphy maintained that federal money would be better spent on student support services like counselors rather than paying officers to patrol hallways. Since the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Murphy’s home state, the senator has made gun control a central part of his political career. The tragedy also put a renewed focus on school policing, and though Murphy said he understands the perspectives of parents who believe their children are safer with cops on campus, “having a police officer in a school is not likely to stop a mass shooter,” he said.

Yet Murphy offered a more nuanced perspective on school-based police than the student activists and civil rights groups who have lauded his bill but demand police-free schools. Murphy said the debate over campus police should not be discussed in “absolutist terms,” adding that some school resource officers do a “great job,” and that communities should decide whether to keep them. He also supported the presence of campus security guards who lack arrest powers.

Youth activists, meanwhile, have been demanding for years that schools become entirely police-free and have argued that security guards contribute to a negative campus climate where students of color feel like they’re constantly under a microscope. Among them is Mariet Leana, a high school junior in New York City and youth activist with the groups and the .

“I have watched security guards repeatedly escalate altercations between students rather than diffuse them,” Leana said during the recent press conference to promote Murphy’s bill. “I have witnessed young people lose their hope and feel like schools are no longer safe places for them because of an overwhelming number of police officers and so few counselors, therapists and other support services that students need to thrive.”

In the last two decades, the federal government has to hire additional school-based police that they make schools safer and could actually do more harm than good. In the 1970s, just 1 percent of schools had police stationed on campus. Today, that figure has jumped to roughly half.

As Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests about officers’ use of force, particularly against Black Americans, it elevated the conversation about the stark and persistent racial disparities in school-based arrests. Black boys are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be arrested at school than their white male classmates, . The racial disparity is even starker for girls. Black girls were more than 3.5 times more likely to face arrest at school than were white girls.

Nationally, 14 million students attend schools that have a campus police officer but lack a counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker, according to . Though the American School Counselor Association recommends a counselor to student ratio of 250 to 1, it’s a benchmark that the public school system has long failed to meet. While schools have in recent years, serves roughly 430 students on average.

Meanwhile in May, Murphy reintroduced the , legislation that’s part of a yearslong effort to prohibit schools from using seclusion and restraint on students.

During the 2017-18 school year, districts nationwide reported using seclusion or physical restraint nearly 102,000 times, , though . The practices are used disproportionately on children with disabilities and students of color and often have deleterious effects including injury and, in rare cases, death.

Murphy’s legislation would prohibit school officials and police from using physical restraint techniques that restrict breathing or limit blood flow to the brain, such as the face-down prone restraint, but it falls short of creating an outright ban. Certain forms of student restraint would still be allowed in emergency situations — a carveout that could be open to interpretation. While Murphy said that physical restraint could be necessary in “limited instances,” some advocates, particularly those who represent children with disabilities, say the practice should never be tolerated.

While both of Murphy’s bills were previously introduced in Washington but failed to catch on, several factors suggest that things could be different this time around. Along with Democratic control of the White House and Congress, the “police-free schools” movement gained steam after Floyd’s murder. The conversation with Murphy was lightly edited for length and clarity.

ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ: Both the Keeping All Students Safe Act and the Counseling Not Criminalization in Schools Act have been introduced in the past. What is different this time around, and what needs to happen to get these bills to the president’s desk? 

Murphy: It certainly helps to have an administration that understands the sort of complicated nuance around how we keep kids safe. In reality, loading schools up with police officers doesn’t end up keeping kids safe, it ends up with far too many kids being arrested for things that should be dealt with inside the school.

Restraining a kid or locking a kid up, you know, may be a short-term solution to diffusing a situation, but it ends up in all sorts of unacceptable long-term trauma that doesn’t help the kid or the school. So you know, we’ve got a president that I think cares about this topic and we now have a majority in the Senate that cares as well. Sen. [Patty] Murray [who chairs the Senate education committee] is a former school teacher, Sen. Murray is very plugged into this conversation and very willing to lead.

On a personal level, what motivates your interest in proposing these bills? 

I have kids in the public schools. I’m married to a former educator who spent 10 years representing low-income children who were facing suspension and expulsion. I have a decent amount of firsthand experience with school systems that are overly punitive in their approach to student misbehavior. I’ve seen what doesn’t work, I’ve seen what works and I just think that, as a parent, I need to be a leader in trying to enact policies that protect kids rather than traumatize kids.

I also represent a state that has continuing, indefensible disparities between how kids of color are treated and how white kids are treated when it comes to restraint and seclusion and arrests. I have an obligation to address the ways in which even my state isn’t meeting the mark on the civil rights of kids.

Turning to your state here, the Obama administration did increase federal funding for school police after the Sandy Hook school shooting. What are your thoughts on the effects of that decision and how did it motivate your decision to try to reduce the presence of police in schools? 

I don’t think there’s one uniform story when it comes to the efficacy of police in schools. I’ve talked to lots of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and I know there are schools in which police are an effective, compassionate presence. But I’ve also seen the data, and the data tells me that, overall, kids of color and disabled kids are treated differently when police are present in schools. Too many of them end up getting arrested for, you know, talking back to a teacher or engaging in pretty run-of-the-mill misbehavior.

So that’s why I’m not proposing to outlaw police in schools, I just think federal dollars should be used to prioritize hiring counselors and psychologists and let state and local dollars be used for police if that community really thinks that there’s no other way to keep their students safe.

Education Secretary in his Connecticut district, adding that they can be a positive presence in schools if well trained. What is your response to his characterization about the efficacy of police in schools in Connecticut, and what work do you need to do to get him on board with your plan? 

I don’t think you can talk about this issue in absolutist terms. There are some school resource officers who are doing a great job. There are some schools that may be well-served by police officers. I just think federal money would be better off spent on other resources to support kids.

I’ve talked about the broad subject with the secretary but I have not talked to him at length about this piece of legislation. So I don’t know his sort of specific views on it, I just ultimately think it would be better off for federal resources to be spent on other kinds of support services for kids.

Mass school shootings have long motivated efforts to increase the police presence in schools. What is your response to parents who demand heightened school security after such tragedies, and what efforts do you believe are more effective in maintaining safe schools?

I completely understand the reaction that happens in schools where parents feel like their kids will be better protected if there are police officers. I have kids in the public schools. My number one, two, three and four priority is that they are safe. But what I know from experience is that having a police officer in a school is not likely to stop a mass shooter, and given the infrequency of school shootings and the incredibly high volume of police in schools, the overall effect of police in schools tends to get kids arrested for stuff that shouldn’t end up with them in the criminal justice system instead of violence being abated.

I mean, what we need are programs that wrap services around kids at risk. What we need to do is identify really troubled kids early on, before they commit acts of violence, and seek to give them pathways back to health. I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that a police officer in a school is going to be the most effective way to stop a mass shooting.

But again I’ll say this, I think that’s up to every school district. As a parent, I don’t want police officers in my kids’ school. But I understand different parents will come to a different decision and that’s why I think it should be local dollars that support police in schools because different jurisdictions are going to make different decisions about whether they think it works to have police in their childrens’ school.

The included an announcement that federal pandemic recovery funding could be used to hire additional police. What is your perspective on his plan and how might it affect students?

I don’t think it’s a smart idea for federal dollars to be used to hire police in schools. I just think it’s a real nightmare for kids when the counselor to student ratio in this country is [out of whack]. Right now, what we’re missing in our schools are guidance counselors and social workers and school psychologists, not uniformed police officers.

Following George Floyd’s murder, school districts across the country severed their ties with the police. What promising alternatives have you seen that schools have adopted, and have you observed any negative effects that maybe need to be ironed out?

I think that there are instances where it makes sense to have school security. I think that what we need to start thinking about is a model where schools have the ability to hire security officers that are trained and professional but don’t come with the power to arrest.

It’s that power of arrest that often gets abused and often gets used to target students of color, so one of the models that I think is worthwhile in pursuing is a level of security professional that has the training necessary to give peace of mind to school superintendents and principals, but isn’t a uniformed police officer so you can’t have hallway fights turned into arrestable offenses.

Your legislation would ban restraint techniques that restrict breathing, such as the prone restraint used on George Floyd. Why does the legislation target these restraint tactics in particular and why are other forms of restraint still permitted in certain circumstances? 

There are limited instances where a teacher or an administrator, as a last resort, has to put their hands on a child. If that child is completely unable to be controlled any other way and is presenting an immediate physical threat to those around them, it may be necessary for an administrator or a teacher to use some physical means to stop that child from hurting others.

What my legislation calls for is best practices to be put in place so as to have every school administrator and teacher trained in de-escalatory measures that view physical restraint as a last resort, but also the prohibition of certain restraints that do pose an immediate safety risk to the student. So there are some restraints, including those that restrict breathing, that should be off limits. But just as importantly, you should have in place protocols that guide adults to different de-escalatory tactics than putting their hands on kids.

ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune found that Illinois schools were for reasons that violated a state law. How will you ensure that schools follow federal rules if signed into law?

If a state doesn’t comply with federal law, they could lose their federal funding and that requires very vigorous oversight from the Department of Education. Now, different administrations have different styles when it comes to enforcement of existing law, but my hope is that if we were to pass [the Keeping All Students Safe Act], the Biden administration would act forcefully to make sure that schools comply. If they don’t, they risk losing their federal funding.

Speaking of federal funding, schools across the country will see an uptick in federal money due to pandemic relief funding. How will these two bills, when taken together, help schools to develop less punitive discipline strategies. 

Many schools will complain that they don’t have the staff resources to try to wrap services around certain children that present a risk of violent behavior, and there’s some truth to that complaint. My hope is that the American Rescue Plan dollars and the funding approved last year will, at least in the short run, help schools staff up appropriately so that they can meet the needs of some of their more troubled kids.

I don’t think, even with meager staff resources, it ever makes sense to lock a kid up in a closet. But I do recognize that it does necessitate additional funding to provide support services to kids who may be acting out in class, sometimes in violent ways. Hopefully the new federal funding streams at least over the next few years will help with that.