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Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
School leaders want more options to restrain students with violent behavior
Apr. 24—Only a few years after raising the threshold to physically restrain or seclude students in Maine schools, the Legislature is considering a bill to allow staff more latitude in dealing with student behavior. School administrators say escalating student misbehavior issues cannot be properly handled under the current law, but disability advocates called the bill a step backward. LD 1248 is sponsored by York Democratic Rep. Holly Sargent and would expand the situations in which teachers can use restraint and seclusion on students. Sargent told the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee at a Wednesday public hearing that she was inspired to file it after visiting four Maine elementary schools and hearing about instances of violence that teachers felt powerless to stop. "I was struck by the behavior that I witnessed, by the weeping of students, of teachers, who sought me out to speak to individually regarding the fact that they were being bruised, they were being bitten, they were being attacked, they were being sworn at," Sargent said. "They felt that there were no consequences, there was no way for them to get control." Her bill would lower the threshold for using restraint and seclusion on a student from an "imminent danger of serious physical injury" to just "imminent danger of injury." It also makes a modification to allow teachers to escort students away involuntarily, and would expand the incidents schools are required to report to include minor injuries. The bill has nine co-sponsors, mostly Democrats with one Republican and one independent. In 2019, the advocacy group Disability Rights Maine sounded the alarm on a drastic increase in cases of seclusion and restraint in schools, which it said had jumped by 60% in four years. The group released a report that year that showed disabled students were disproportionately restrained and secluded, which led to the passage of a new law in 2021 that raised the threshold for the use of those practices. Ben Jones, director of legal and policy initiatives with the Freeport nonprofit Lives in the Balance, said the passage of this new bill would undo the work that happened in 2021 to reduce Maine's use of restraint, which was the highest per-capita in the country at the time. He said what Maine educators need is better training on how to work with emotionally dysregulated students, not lowered thresholds. "It's very difficult for me to understand why more restraint and seclusion would lead to greater safety for either party," Jones testified. But now, superintendents and education leaders are arguing those rules need to be revised again in order to make teachers' work safer and easier. Patricia Hopkins, superintendent of MSAD 11 in Gardiner, recounted several cases of students in her district who have disruptive or dangerous behaviors that don't meet the current threshold for restraint or seclusion. When students with emotional and behavioral issues punch, spit, kick, pull hair and scream at others, it affects the entire school community, said Victoria Duguay, principal of River View Community School in MSAD 11. "Over time this erodes the sense of phycological safety that is critical for all students to thrive and learn," Duguay said. "When verbal interventions and environmental supports fail, a trained, calm and compassionate physical escort to a quiet and designated safe room allows staff to deescalate the student away from public view." Gorham Superintendent Heather Perry submitted written testimony in strong support of the bill. She said Gorham schools are seeing a rising number of student behavior issues, including many situations where staff feel they cannot safely intervene because of the current law. "These changes are not about increasing restraint — they are about giving staff the practical tools they need to keep all students safe," Perry said. "In Gorham, we always prioritize using the least restrictive approaches. But when those fail, it is essential that educators have the legal clarity and support to act in the moment to protect both the student in crisis and those around them." The Maine Education Association, the state's teacher union, the Maine Principals' Association, the group that oversees school sports, and the Maine School Management Association all supported the bill. But disability advocates, and parents of students who have been restrained, said the bill is regressive and won't improve conditions for teachers. "Deleting the phrase 'serious physical' throughout the statute would effectively permit unbounded use of restraint throughout Maine," said Jeanette Plourde, an attorney with Disability Rights Maine. She argued instead for the expansion of technical support for schools to implement the current law. Ellsworth mother Krystal Emerson said that her son has been frequently restrained at school, an experience that has had long-term negative effects and amplified his anxiety and emotional dysregulation. "Almost two years after that first incident he is still visibly shaken by these events. Just yesterday he recounted that he was scared after being restrained or secluded, that every day he worried that it would happen again," Emerson said. Copy the Story Link
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Legislation would make it easier to restrain and forcibly move Maine students
Principal Victoria Duguay of River View Community School said that under the current law, educators aren't allowed to escort students to safe spaces unless they consent — something that doesn't always happen in the midst of a behavioral crisis. (Photo by Troy Bennett/ Maine Morning Star) Driven by increasing reports of student misbehavior, some teachers and administrators want to make it easier for staff to physically restrain students, a practice which is only supposed to be used in emergency situations under current state law. Most states have some limitations on when schools can use restraints and seclusion, temporarily immobilizing students and putting them in empty rooms until they can calm down. Before Maine passed its current law in 2021, the state was restraining students at the highest rate in the country per capita, and secluding them at the second highest rate per capita, according to federal data cited by Disability Rights Maine at the time. These incidents disproportionately involved students with disabilities, leading disability rights advocates to push for the current law, which requires school staff to justify the use of restraint, only rely on them in cases where there was 'imminent danger of serious physical injury,' use the least amount of force necessary and end interventions as soon as the danger has passed. But in light of increasing behavioral challenges, some administrators and teachers want the lower the legal threshold for restraint and seclusion. On Wednesday, the Maine Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Committee is holding a public hearing on legislation, introduced by Rep. Holly Sargent (D-York), that would make several changes to state law. Specifically, the proposal would broaden the definition of 'physical escort,' striking the word 'voluntary' from descriptions of how staff can move or touch a student. The bill, LD 1248, would also decrease the level of danger posed from 'serious physical injury' to just 'injury.' Restraint and seclusion practices across the country have been linked to trauma, serious injuries, and even death. Disability rights advocates are warning that any changes must prioritize student safety and mental health, and that the use of restraint and seclusion generally goes against both. Before the law was passed, schools would sometimes drag students to seclusion rooms without classifying the action as a restraint, said Ben Jones, a former lawyer for Disability Rights Maine who now serves as director of legal and policy initiatives for Lives in the Balance, a nonprofit that advocates against punitive, exclusionary disciplinary practices in schools. Research suggests state not doing enough to help Maine districts manage student behavior The push for relaxing the rules is coming from districts like MSAD 11 in Gardiner, where administrators say frequent behavioral incidents, especially among younger students, have left them without the tools to respond. Principal Victoria Duguay of River View Community School said that under the current law, educators aren't allowed to escort students to safe spaces unless they consent — something that doesn't always happen in the midst of a behavioral crisis. 'When a student is dysregulated to the point where they're clearing a classroom and potentially shutting a building down, we didn't have any tools available to escort a student to a safe room if the student didn't want to go on their own,' Duguay said. She also pointed to the aspect of current law that requires a threat of 'serious physical injury.' 'Not having that ability to be able to get that child to a safe place is that piece in the law that we're struggling with, because they're not presenting that serious physical harm,' she said. Attorneys consulted by the district said that because most of the third to fifth graders the community school serves are young, they do not present a serious risk of injury to adults even when they lash out. Because of educator feedback, Maine's largest teachers union, the Maine Education Association, is supporting this legislation, along with a few other bills intended to offer de-escalation training and mental health support in schools, said MEA President Jesse Hargrove. 'We want to make sure that we are following least restrictive interventions, but we also want to make sure that other students and staff are safe,' he said. 'The state law is an effort to sort of create some space so that the folks at the local level have a bit more flexibility to address the concerns that they are seeing within their districts and school sites.' When asked if they are worried about the use of restraints increasing under a more relaxed law, MEA and Gardiner administrators, Duguay and Superintendent Patricia Hopkins, said they trusted educators to use the least restrictive processes possible. However, Atlee Reilly, managing attorney of Disability Rights Maine's educational advocacy, said he's concerned about the potential impacts of the bill. For example, because the proposal would remove the word 'voluntary' from the text that covers how a student could be physically moved, the law would no longer count involuntary movements as a restraint. Reilly argued that while the number of reported incidents would likely decrease, that 'doesn't mean that people are going to be putting their hands on kids less.' He added, 'I think that is almost certainly going to go up.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
