In early March, the House approved legislation to protect children from harmful restraint and seclusion in school. The Keeping All Students Safe Act was a response to a 2009 GAO report that uncovered hundreds of allegations that schoolchildren have been abused, and some even died, as a result of inappropriate uses of seclusion and restraint in classrooms. These practices have been used disproportionately on children with disabilities. A recent article by NBC 8 of Grand Rapids, Mich. demonstrates the importance of this legislation:

“The family of a pre-schooler filed a lawsuit against the Mona Shores School District for restraining the disabled child in a chair for the entire school day for one semester, according to the suit.

“Ethan Holden was a special ed student at Ross Park Elementary School, documents say. His mother came to a class Christmas party in December 2008 and saw her son strapped in a chair, his feet lifted off the ground.

“She later learned this is how Ethan spent his days, the lawsuit says. Alan and Nichole Holden claim they were never informed of their son's restraint. Ethan has a speech problem and couldn't communicate easily with his teachers and other staff.

“The child had fallen over while strapped in the chair as he tried to escape, according to the suit, filed in July in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.”

The Holden family traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with Chairman Miller about their experience in late 2009. The Keeping All Students Safe Act would establish minimum safety standards in schools to protect children like Ethan from this abuse.

President Obama yesterday signed a bill into law that solves a funding equity issue regarding independent living centers. This new law is especially significant in light of the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which Congress celebrated on Monday. The Independent Living Centers Technical Adjustment Act, sponsored by Chairman Miller, ensures that independent living centers for disabled adults receive sufficient federal funding.

These centers provide independent living skills training, peer counseling, and other vital training services for Americans with disabilities. Disability Scoop commented on the necessity of the new law:

“The law comes in response to a funding disparity which emerged as a result of last year’s stimulus package, leaving some independent living centers eligible for far more money in future years, while other centers would be underfunded.

“The legislation signed by Obama this week closes the gap, ensuring that stimulus dollars won’t compromise future funding of the centers.”

Chairman Miller praised the President’s support for the Independent Living Centers Technical Adjustment Act and stated:

“In many areas, independent living centers are the primary provider of services in a community for people with disabilities. Staff at these centers work to empower people with disabilities with choices and the opportunities to help themselves live more independent lives.”

Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI), who was partially paralyzed at age 16, presided over the House of Representatives today  — marking the first time in our history that a member in a wheelchair has ascended to the speaker’s podium.  Langevin’s achievement coincides with the 20-year anniversary of The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which opened public spaces, employment and education opportunities to people with disabilities.

Chairman Miller, who championed the bill in 1990 and worked to strengthen the legislation in 2008, stated:

“We wrote the ADA to ensure America works for all Americans. The law broke down barriers, prohibited discrimination, promoted access and provided basic civil rights to people with disabilities. Over the past 20 years, people with disabilities have been able to access educational opportunities and employment.  They’ve been able to use buildings, transportation, and communities that once presented huge obstacles.”

While today is a day to celebrate a great accomplishment, there is still much work to do. The Washington Post reported today that Americans with disabilities still face large challenges in the job market:

“It is a brutal job market for many workers, but even more so for those with disabilities, who can struggle in the best of times. For them, the unemployment rate is now 14.4 percent -- 50 percent higher than it is for other workers, and the jobs gap is larger still because so many are not counted as being in the workforce.”

Chairman Miller also noted that disabled Americans still face unfair burdens and urged Congress to continue its work on their behalf:

“It’s time for us to look to the future, to honor the successes of the past and build upon them to continue to increase the options of people with disabilities. We still have a long way to go to improve educational outcomes for all students, especially students with disabilities and to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.”

ABC News has an excellent story about H.R. 4247, the Keeping All Students Safe Act today. It highlights that under this Act, disabled kids get a break: bill may protect them against restraint in school.

It says:

The Keeping All Students Safe Act in the House would implement minimum federal safety standards for public schools similar to those that exist for hospitals and other community facilities. There is no current federal regulation on how seclusion and restraint can be used in schools, both private and public.

The bipartisan effort is led by Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and was prompted by a report last year that said two decades of torture-like tactics, mostly on special needs kids, went unregulated on the federal level.

We encourage you to watch the debate on the House floor today, read the entire ABC News article and learn more about H.R. 4247, the Keeping All Students Safe Act.

The House began debate on H.R. 4247, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, at 12:30 ET today. The House may vote on the bill as early as 3:30 or 4 pm.

The legislation will – for the first time – protect children from abusive uses of restraint and seclusion in U.S. schools. This legislation is a direct response to recent U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation that found that at least hundreds of kids were being abused in school by misuses of restraint or seclusion. The victims were children as young as three and four, with disabilities and without disabilities, in public and private schools. In some cases, children died.

GAO found that teachers are too often using these practices as frequent discipline. They’re using it when children fidget in their chairs, are unwilling to follow directions or leave a room.

In some cases, these abuses are nothing short of torture: teachers tying children to chairs, taping their mouths shut, using handcuffs, denying them food, fracturing bones, locking them in small dark spaces, and sitting on them until they turn blue.

GAO also found that there are no federal laws on the books to keep this from happening in schools, where kids spend most of their time.  Hospitals and other facilities that receive federal taxpayer dollars do have laws in place to protect kids from these practices. Without a federal standard, state laws are all over the map. Nineteen states have no laws whatsoever – meaning kids have no protections.

The bill has bipartisan support – it was introduced by U.S. Reps. George Miller (D-CA), and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), who both serve on the House Education and Labor Committee and are members of their respective party leaderships.

Learn more about the GAO’s shocking investigation into the use of seclusion and restraint in schools around the country.

Read more about H.R. 4247, the Keeping All Students Safe Act.

Today, the Committee will consider legislation to that will protect schoolchildren from harmful uses of restraint and seclusion in their classrooms.The Hill newspaper explored the story behind the bill:

Curtis Decker, the executive director of the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), remembers when he first heard about children being secluded and restrained in schools. The parents of an American Indian girl with Down syndrome found out their daughter was being tied to her chair at school when they went to pick her up one day.

That was six or seven years ago, Decker recalled, and he and his staff discussed it in a meeting as an isolated case.

Then they started hearing other, similar stories. School employees sat on a girl in Wisconsin as a punishment for blowing bubbles in her milk. A child in Michigan had an epileptic seizure on the first day of school and died after school officials sat on him. A school in Tennessee had metal-door-enclosed seclusion rooms that looked like “prison cells from World War II,” NDRN senior staff attorney Jane Hudson said.

Hudson wrote a report on seclusion and restraint in schools, and a year ago, the organization took its findings to House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.).

“The types of abuse these kids are suffering are so disturbing, you’d think these were stories about torture tactics used at prison camps,” Miller said in an e-mail.

In addition to these horrific stories, the committee heard from other parents whose children had been victims of abuse by incorrect application of these techniques.

In response to these stories and others, Rep. Joe Courtney called on Congress to make schools safe havens for children. This echos the calls of Chairman Miller to make schools safe for students and free from abuse.

The markup of H.R. 4247 - Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act starts at 11:00am ET today and will be live webcast. Please join us.

Parade Magazine will run a story in tomorrow's print edition (available online now) highlighting the use and abuse of seclusion and restraint techniques in schools. Parade reports:

Across the country each year, thousands of schoolchildren—especially disabled ones—are restrained or isolated for misbehaving. The Government Accountability Office reported more than 33,000 incidents of restraint or seclusion last year at schools in Texas and California, two of only six states that track such data. Nineteen states have no regulations at all regarding the use of restraint and seclusion in schools.

The Committee held a hearing in May on the findings of the GAO report and to hear testimony from parents of children that had been abused through the use of restraint techniques. The hearing generated considerable press coverage and Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, pledged to asking all state school chiefs to submit their plans for using seclusion, restraint and other practices for physical intervention in their schools.

“Children’s safety has to be our number one concern before we begin to think about educating them and doing other things,” said Duncan. “And as we go into the summer and prepare for next school year I want to make sure that as we go into next school year that every state has a real clear plan as to how to do this in a way that makes sense. And doesn’t jeopardize, doesn’t endanger children.”

And again Parade says:

George Miller (D., Calif.) is working on a new set of rules that could limit the use of restraint and seclusion, provide funding to train school staff, and require communication with parents if extreme disciplinary measures are used. Says Miller: “We’re meeting with the Obama Administration and education experts about a federal action to keep kids safe and stop horrific abuses from going unchecked.”

We encourage you to read the entire Parade article and watch Chairman Miller 's recent interview on CNN about this topic.

Chairman George Miller was on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer last night discussing the use and abuse of seclusion and restraint techniques in schools. On May 19, 2009, the Committee held a hearing examining the abusive and deadly use of seclusion and restraint in schools. In response to the GAO report delivered at that hearing, Chairman Miller said, “The GAO’s report shows that in too many cases, a child’s life wound up being threatened even though that child was not a threat to others. This behavior, in some instances, looks like torture. The current situation is unacceptable and cannot continue.”

The Wall Street Journal ran an article this morning to draw attention to the abusive use of seclusion and restraint within schools. These abuses were brought to national attention during a hearing by the Education and Labor Committee.

In Washington, the effort to limit the use of such techniques is being championed by Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. In January, the California Democrat called for the GAO review, and last month his committee held hearings. What was discovered, he said in an interview, is a system "in which children are unnecessarily dying and being harmed."

In testimony before Congress in May, Education Secretary Arne Duncan called such findings "disturbing" and said he is instructing chief school officers in all 50 states to detail their plans for keeping students safe.

...

The scope of any possible federal law is still uncertain. Mr. Miller and others involved in the discussions say they would like it to be crafted so that states are primarily responsible for developing and enforcing policies.

We encourage you to watch the video testimony and to read the entire Wall Street Journal article.

The committee's hearing about the GAO report regarding the use of seclusion and restraint generated a lot of television coverage. Please take the time to watch the videos below:

The Las Vegas Sun wrote an editorial over the weekend about the committee's hearing regarding the GAO report about seclusion and restraint techniques used in schools. After recounting some of the horrendous accounts of abuse, the Sun said this:

This is outrageous. Federal law allows workers in hospitals and treatment centers to restrain children only in emergencies, but the law leaves it up to the states to set policies regarding schools. State laws differ greatly. Many states allow teachers to severely restrain disabled children for little reason. To its credit, Nevada does not. The state outlaws the use of restraints on disabled children except where absolutely necessary and requires that school employees who work with disabled students receive training on “positive behavioral intervention.”

The disparity between states and the harshness of some of the restraint techniques has caught the attention of Congress. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said the result is that many students “are abused under the guise of punishment.”

Miller has called for legislation to outlaw schools from restraining or secluding students except in emergencies. Congress should act on that before any more students are hurt.

Michigan News also ran a similar editorial today. In it, they mentioned the Secretary Duncan's commitment to evaluate state guidelines, ensuring sensible policies are in place next school year. The Michigan News said:

Confining and restraining a student should be the last resort in every classroom. Training must be a critical part of any state policy. School should be a safe place for students and faculty.

We encourage you to read the Las Vegas Sun and the Michigan News editorials in their entirety.

To learn more about seclusion and restraint, click here.

On the front page of the USA today, Greg Toppo writes an excellent article about how restraint can dispirit and hurt special-ed students. In it, Mr. Toppo writes:

His case is one of 10 to be highlighted today during a hearing on Capitol Hill over the use of restraint and seclusion in the USA's public and private schools — techniques often used to control children with disabilities.

A new report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, also out today, finds "widespread" allegations of abuse involving the practices in schools — even when students aren't physically aggressive or dangerous to themselves or others.

Investigators say they uncovered hundreds of allegations of abuse involving restraint or seclusion at public and private schools nationwide between 1990 and 2009.

Today the committee will have a hearing examining the abusive and deadly use of seclusion and restraint in schools at 10 am ET.

Additional stories about this subject can be found at NPR, CBS, and CNN. All are worth your time.