Forum: Restraints in Schools
A panel of advocates and researchers discussed the continued use of physical restraints on students, disproportionately affecting students with disabilities and those from marginalized racial and ethnic communities, at a public forum in September at the Institute on Community Integration.
Nearly 2,500 Minnesota children, and 71,315 nationwide, were subjected to physical restraint in school, according to 2017-18 civil rights data collected by the U.S. Department of Education and summarized in a new ICI Policy Research Brief , The Unrestrained Use of Physical Restraints in Schools. The brief was edited by Anna Heinzerling, a former MNLEND fellow; and Sheryl Larson, a principal investigator in ICI’s Research and Training Center on Community Living. They also reviewed study data on restraints’ negative effects, including injuries and deaths.
Though they account for just 17% of the overall student population in Minnesota, students receiving special education services accounted for 93% of students who are restrained in school. Nationally, Black students make up 18% of special education students, but account for 25% of the special education students who are restrained in school. In Minnesota, nearly a third of special education students who are restrained in school are Black, but they make up just 11% of special education students overall.
“Physical restraints have been used in hospitals, prisons, public law enforcement settings, and people have been concerned about them for a long time, which is why there have been laws and standards put in place in those settings,” said Heinzerling, a clinical social worker. “Where there still seems to be the biggest sticking point is in schools. There has been a lot of resistance to banning any kind of restraint in schools. There is currently no federal law that puts restriction on physical restraints and states are all over in terms of accountability and application.”
There hasn’t been the political will to change this in Minnesota, said Jessica Webster, staff attorney with the Legal Services Advocacy Project.
“We see children injured, who don’t want to go back to school, whose trust in school has now been shattered, and it’s a really poor tool that we keep in the toolbox,” Webster said. “There was thorough reporting done on this in 2013, but our numbers [on the use of restraints] are still staggeringly high. It’s time to end it, but we haven’t decided or said as a state that we’re going to end it.”
In addition to Webster, forum discussants included Erin Sandsmark, a community advocate with Solutions Not Suspensions ; and Nancy Weiss, an advisor with the National Leadership Consortium on Developmental Disabilities.
Participants held a lively discussion of several related topics, including the use of seclusion and other tactics as punishment, the role of police officers in schools, and the need for better teacher training on de-escalation techniques as they work with students with disabilities.
The forum was part of a continuing ICI series featuring presentations and facilitated discussions around topics of importance to people with disabilities. The forums explore ideas raised in related issues of Policy Research Brief.