PBS WI: "Seclusions, restraints happening all over Wis"; majority are disabled students

May 22, 2025, PBS Wisconsin: Wisconsin schools face a growing number of students being secluded and restrained

https://pbswisconsin.org/news-item/wisconsin-schools-face-a-growing-number-of-students-being-secluded-and-restrained/  

A report issued by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction shows that the number of children who were secluded from others or physically restrained in response to dangerous behavior spiked in the 2023-24 school year, with more incidents among elementary and special education students.

The number of times that Wisconsin students became “an imminent physical risk to their safety or the safety of others” and were then secluded in a space they couldn’t leave or restrained by school staff increased significantly in the 2023-24 school year.

According to a report from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, there were more than 6,222 incidents that resulted in student seclusion and staff physically restrained students 7,439 times in public and private schools statewide.

These figures represent an increase in seclusion actions of just more than 15% and an increase in the use of physical restraint by almost 17% over the prior school year. . . .

“A student is only to be secluded or restrained in situations where they present an imminent physical risk to their safety or the safety of others,” said Tim Peerenboom, a school psychology consultant with the state.

He explained that one of the only times seclusion or restraint is warranted is when “a student is physically aggressive towards peers or towards their teacher, particularly if they have something that can cause serious physical harm,” such as when “a student may grab a scissors and try and physically attack a peer or an adult.”

Peerenboom said these incidents can have lasting effects on all involved. . . .

Which students are secluded and restrained more often?

The state’s data show a large majority of the 2023-24 incidents – almost 90% of seclusions and 82% of restraints – involved elementary school students.

The data also show that seclusion and restraint incidents occur at much higher rates for children with disabilities or students with individual education programs, known as IEPs.

Almost 81% of all seclusions and just more than 76% of restraints over that school year involved students with disabilities.. . .

There are many other factors that go into these emotional and behavioral incidents and why they overwhelmingly involve younger students with disabilities. Staffing shortages are one significant factor. . . .

He said it is very demanding for school staff to have to work one-on-one with challenging students.

“When we’re stressed, when we’re anxious, it’s harder to be positive,” he said, adding that in those situations, staff may be “more likely to feel burnt out, to have a shorter fuse and that makes it harder to make the good, calm, focused decisions that we need to in these highly intense situations.”

Another point in the data shows that seclusions and restraints are happening repeatedly to the same students throughout the year. Specifically, the data shows that of the 6,200 seclusions last year involved just more than 2,000 students total – or about 3 instances per student secluded. And the 7,400 restraints involved just more than 2,900 children, which equates to 2.6 times each restrained student was restrained.

Peerenboom noted that seclusions and restraints are happening all over Wisconsin.

“This is a widespread concern across the state,” he said, adding that “we’re not seeing pockets or areas of the state where we’re seeing big differences.”

Statewide, the number of seclusions in 2023-24 were at 760 schools, which encompasses almost 33% of the roughly 3,000 schools statewide. – while restraints happened at 1039 or just more than 44% of schools.

Learning lessons from the data

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has been collecting seclusion and restraint data for the past half-decade, when state law began requiring it. That means the data fluctuates widely because of the initial years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when most students were not attending in-person school.   . . .

Because of the pandemic, he explained that many children missed out on learning “social-emotional skills and self-regulation skills and how to be around other kids and how they behave in social environments. So, we’re seeing some adjustments socially and emotionally with readjusting to that period where we were on lockdown.”

While the data around increases in seclusion and restraint has been difficult to accept for educators, tracking such data can ultimately help students and educators, said Peerenboom. . . .