Recently, the Prescott Unified School District in Arizona announced that it planned to dismantle a padded isolation room at one of its elementary schools that was used to isolate students with disabilities as punishment. This was a six-foot by six-foot room in a public school!
Last month, when I conducted an on-site review of a private school as part of my legal consultation as an education expert with an attorney on a school shooting matter, I came upon two isolation rooms that were padded with black padding and lit by a 40-watt florescent bulb. The principal told me that these are used as “incentives for the kids to follow the rules.”
Congressional investigators uncovered widespread abuse of techniques used to restrain or discipline special education students in U.S. schools, with some deaths linked to the practices. The Government Accountability Office (BAO) released a report recently that documented serious problems with the way children with disabilities are being treated in public schools, including cases of children being held face-down on the ground. (Read full report)
In some cases children as young as 6 have been locked away for hours at a time. The GAO indicated that the policy is fairly widespread. The state regulations about how to handle students don’t exist in about half the states.
The GAO found that state laws governing the treatment of the more than 6 million children classified as having special needs, conditions including autism and Down syndrome, are patchy at best. Teachers and school staff lack training in correct restraint methods and positive behavioral techniques.
Parents contacted by CNN said they were not told their child was being disciplined until he or she began to behave badly at home – a sign of trouble at school. Schools sometimes try to minimize or deny that this takes place.
In one situation that I am personally familiar with, the mother of a 13-year-old child with Down syndrome was contacted by the child’s teacher in March by telephone. The teacher said that this child “while in the ‘time-out’ room, took off all her clothes.” This was the first time that this mother heard from the school that her child was being disciplined in this way. It turned out that Victoria was taken to this room by at least two staff members at least four or more times during the school year for being non-compliant with the teacher’s classroom rules. She was in a six-by-six cinder block “closet” and was not allowed to leave until she stopped crying and screaming and kicking the walls and door. Once this was discovered, the school had no positive behavior plan, the mother sent a letter of “no consent” to school officials.
