Restrained: State reports thousands of cases in Wisconsin schools<\/a><\/strong>
\nby WISC-TV Fresno, Madison, Wisconsin, Morgan Murphy Media<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s the story?<\/p>\n
WISC-TV Madison, Wisconsin did a story about seclusion and restraint in the state’s schools. I found it on YouTube.<\/p>\n
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported 4,949 incidents of restraint in 2021, and 4,344 incidents of seclusion. More than 80 percent involved disabled students, up a few points from 2020. The data is broken down, and includes all of the schools in the state.<\/p>\n
A DPI staff member is quoted, saying that restraint and seclusion can only be used when student behavior presents a risk to safety.<\/p>\n
2019 Wisconsin Act 118 requires districts to report data to the DPI.<\/p>\n
The DPI staff member says that the experience can stay through the student’s K-12 experience.<\/p>\n
WISC-TV interviewed Nora Rabel, a 16-year old autistic\/Down syndrome. Video shows staff dragging her through hallways.<\/p>\n
Staff claim that Nora would “lash out” at staff members, noting that she would spit, kick, hit and attempt to bite.<\/p>\n
Her father is quoted about not being told the truth and believes the school staff went too far.<\/p>\n
Joanne Juhnke is quoted as saying that the ideal approach would involve not letting situations get to the point of seclusion and restraint in the first place. She is a disability rights advocate. She told WISC-TV that she wants it outlawed but there are situations where restraint is necessary. She says that there are also many systemic failures.<\/p>\n
A member of the teacher’s union serving Madison schools says that educational support professionals are the lowest paid in the school district. Employees are retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target are paid more.<\/p>\n
The union member says that there needs to be training in de-escalation, but they don’t want a top down program, but a grassroots movement.<\/p>\n
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), a co-sponsor of the Keep All Students Safe Act, declined to be interviewed by WISC-TV. The station reports that it’s been in a committee since last summer.<\/p>\n
Included in the story?<\/p>\n
Yes. Both a 16-year old student and p the disability advocate ((not all disability advocates are disabled).<\/p>\n
COMMENTARY:<\/p>\n
Is this the Least Restrictive Environment?<\/p>\n
Seclusion and restraint, as well as timeout (not mentioned in the story), are primarily used on disabled students.<\/p>\n
What needs to change?<\/p>\n
Episode 102 of the podcast I Survived Special Education: Not A Joke covers the Keep All Students Safe Act. It is titled “Solitary Confinement”.<\/p>\n
To summarize, it specifically excludes timeout, which is defined as being placed in solitary confinement for behavior, which is not locked. Legally speaking, seclusion has a lock, and timeout doesn’t.<\/p>\n
This is an example of why:<\/p>\n
The system must change, without excuses.<\/p>\n
1. School: Why are educational support professionals paid so little, but given so much power?
\n2. State: What is the state government using the data for?
\n3. School: What caused R to Rabel “lash out” against staff members? Did she “lash out” against students, too?
\n4. State: Why isn’t the state doing anything about it? They have the right to ban it on its own, and enforce it.
\n5. Congress: The original report, as I discuss in episode 102 of the podcast, discussed how big the problem is at the national level. As I pointed out in the podcast, it’s been re-introduced every Congressional term and doesn’t go behind the introduction and committee phase
\n6. Why only focus on the disabled student’s behavior? The last Teacher Bully post is about a Fresno elementary school principal who shoved an autistic 10 year old in the cafeteria. Other than the student, what caused the principal’s behavior?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TEACHER BULLY: All Schools in Wisconsin. September 23, 2022 Is it equal for special education students? Disabled students face a lot of challenges. Bullying, timeout, seclusion, and restraint. What\u2019s in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-episode","category-voices","tag-teacher-bully"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notajoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}