Measure would curb restraint, seclusion of students by schools
He sat there, glaring at the teacher, refusing to do anything she asked of him.
Then one by one he started breaking pencils in half, throwing the pieces at his stunned classmates, his angry stare never leaving his teacher’s frustrated gaze.
She had taught school for years, had dealt with tough kids before, she told me.
But none like Jonathan, an angry foster child with likely a number of yet undiagnosed mental issues and educational deficits. He was new to the teacher’s secondgrade class, but already his behaviors had forced her to call in the school’s de-escalation staffers to handle him several times.
Exactly how they handled him — with restraint or seclusion or some other method of containment, calming and control — I was never clear on. He was my foster son only briefly.
For a time, Katie Stone had also been in the dark about how a public elementary school in Albuquerque was dealing with her daughter’s behaviors. Her daughter has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and an intellect beyond her years.
“We were told these were ‘therapeutic holds’ using ‘de-escalation’ techniques,” she said. But Stone kept asking for details. An educational assistant, she was told, often did the restraining, but on at least one occasion the task fell to a volunteer office worker who pinned her daughter to the floor with her knee.
As the behaviors worsened with each
incident, Stone said, the school began isolating her daughter, removing the girl from the class and making her sit in a “timeout room.”
That room, Stone learned later, was a closet.
She pulled her daughter, then in fourth grade, out of public school and started home-schooling her.
Stone also started advocating for a law to limit the use of restraint and seclusion in the state’s public schools. House Bill 75 — sponsored this legislative session by Reps. James Smith, R-Sandia Park, and Deborah Armstrong, D-Albuquerque — is the third attempt and has, she thinks, the best chance of becoming law.
New Mexico is one of nine states with only voluntary guidance on policies governing restraint and seclusion in schools. The current bill, if passed and signed by the governor, would require school districts and charter schools to adopt policies and procedures that limit the use of these techniques except in emergency situations and not as planned interventions, to notify parents of the student subjected to the techniques within 24 hours and to annually report the uses of the techniques to the state Public Education Department.
“To me, this bill is so logical,” said Stone, who is also a public radio producer and an advocate with the New Mexico Autism Society, one of at least 15 agencies supporting the bill. “Even jails and juvenile psychiatric facilities have more rules and regulations about restraining people than there are in our schools.”
Seclusion and restraint can be dangerous practices, especially when performed by personnel not trained in proper methods or who overuse the methods as a form of discipline and de-escalation. Many child experts call the techniques abusive and ineffective, with the potential to leave lasting psychological damage to the children.
Most seclusion and restraint incidents involved children under fifth grade. Most involved boys. And an estimated 76 percent involved children with disabilities, according to studies presented Friday to the House Education Committee, which approved a revised version of the bill.
In the past school year, Albuquerque Public Schools reported 1,025 incidents in which students were restrained, according to Pegasus Legal Services for Children in Albuquerque. The Legislative Finance Committee also estimates that about six cases annually result in lawsuits that cost the district tens of thousands of dollars.
“It’s not a once-in-awhile kind of thing for some of our kids, but a regular occurrence,” Stone said. “And we’re not talking the use of restraint and seclusion required because of fighting students. That’s not the point of this bill.”
Stone said she is hopeful that with a few tweaks to the bill, APS and the PED will support the legislation before it is considered by the House Judiciary Committee. No date has been set yet for that.
Still a point of contention is PED’s position that the use of restraint and seclusion be a part of a special education student’s individualized education plan, “with input and consideration for the teachers and parents involved,” PED spokesman Robert McEntyre said.
APS officials did not return calls for comment.
Stone’s daughter, incidentally, never returned to public school but was enrolled in a smaller, private high school where restraint is never used.
I never saw Jonathan again after he was moved to a higher level of foster care and then home to his biological family in another state. I’d like to think he got the help he needed and that whatever school he ended up in had the training and support it needed to help him without use of needless restraint or isolation. But it apparently wasn’t enough. He hanged himself in an out-of-state juvenile detention facility at age 16.