Virginia: Schools use restraint 6,000 times '13-'14; "vast majority" are SPED

Aug 31, 2018, Coloradoan: Thousands of students are forced into restraints or seclusion each year in Virginia schools https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/08/31/children-restrained-anger-management-school-discipline/1157423002/ Strapped to a chair at the arms and legs, a hood pulled over your head. For Virginia parents, a state investigation's findings earlier this year on the treatment of immigrant teens in a detention center were a wake-up call. The use of physical restraint, mechanical restraints and seclusion of children shocked many, but investigators concluded that abuse did not occur: Such treatment is within legal guidelines in Virginia. Much of the same use of restraint and seclusion — including strapping teenagers to chairs and locking them in rooms — also is allowed in public schools statewide. In the 2013-14 school year, public school students in Virginia were restrained more than 6,000 times. They were strapped to chairs, physically restrained or placed into seclusion, according to the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, the only source of comprehensive data about the use of restraint in the nation’s public schools. Virginia is not alone. During the 2015-16 school year, the nation's public school students were physically restrained, mechanically restrained or isolated 122,000 times. In nearly 86,000 of those instances, students were subjected to physical or mechanical restraint, and in 36,000 were subjected to seclusion, according to the data collection. … “Seclusion and restraint has been used in hospitals for many many years. I don’t know how far back it goes. They have used one form of restraint or another well over 100 years in our facilities.” The vast majority of those students were in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act programs, according to the civil rights data collection…. But when a child in a public school ends up in a crisis situation, no one is trained to carry out those policies…. “We provide support devices to assist students in maintaining safe and proper posture as directed by the IEPs,” said Brenda Lovekamp, administrative assistant to the superintendent of Staunton City Schools. Staunton, a slightly smaller district with about 2,700 students, has almost 15 percent of its students in special education programs….