Keeping parents in the know
Gov. Tony Evers signs a law regulating student isolation and restraints.
MADISON – Wisconsin school officials will be required to tell the public each time students in their care are isolated or restrained under a new law.
Gov. Tony Evers signed a bipartisan bill Monday that requires school officials who restrain or isolate students to quickly provide parents or guardians with a report on the incident and to annually report such events to the state Department of Public Instruction.
The new law comes as lawmakers and student advocates across the country push for fresh scrutiny on schools’ policies to manage student behavior in the wake of a Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Illinois investigation that found schools were illegally separating children from their peers.
The bill signed by Evers, the former state superintendent and head of DPI, also requires new training in de-escalation for school staff who are charged with restraining students who are misbehaving and not in control of their emotions or actions. It requires school officials to remove locks from doors to rooms used for secluding students.
The new law requires school officials to debrief on each incident that prompted students to be restrained or isolated.
Evers in a statement said the new law, and two other school-related measures signed Monday, “are another step forward in ensuring that our kids feel safe and supported in their classrooms.”
Bill co-author Sen. Luther Olsen, RRipon, said the new measures seek to expand regulation of such practices, put in place in 2012, to ensure restraint and isolation are used as a last resort.
The Illinois investigation found children were isolated for offenses as small as spilling milk and that the practice was used to punish the students rather than to manage their behavior.
Sen. La Tonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, said the measures are especially important to help students with disabilities feel safer at school. Bill co-author Romaine Quinn, R-Barron, said such practices can leave students feeling “frightened, confused and hesitant to return to school.”
Lisa Pugh of The Arc, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities, told lawmakers in November the bill’s requirement to inform parents was crucial to understanding how often schools use such practices.
Pugh said she learned from another parent — and not school officials — that her daughter, who has disabilities and is nonverbal, was restrained twice by school officials last year.
Pugh later learned in one incident her daughter was restrained for 35 minutes after accidentally soiling herself because school staff ignored her daughter’s signing to say she needed to use the bathroom.
“School districts need clearer definitions of what an incident is, what to do next, when it should be reported, and to whom,” Pugh testified in November.
But the new law also requires more work from school staff and doesn’t provide any new funding for additional staff.
“Without question this bill will impose new requirements and additional work on school personnel,” Wisconsin Association of School Boards lobbyist Dan Rossmiller told lawmakers about the bill. “The potential costs and workload that will result from these new requirements make it difficult for the WASB to support the bill. That said, we believe a number of changes made by the bill will be beneficial to pupils and parents.”
Rossmiller said school officials worried the new law’s reporting requirements could have eroded privacy federal law provides students if the incident data was made available to the public by each school district. But by housing the data at the DPI, Rossmiller said transparency could be achieved without identifying students.