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Yahoo
5 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Bill making it easier to restrain and seclude students passed by Maine lawmakers
Gardiner-area Superintendent Patricia Hopkins testifies at an education committee public hearing in favor of a bill that would ease restrictions on restraint and seclusion. (Photo by Eesha Pendharkar/ Maine Morning Star) Both chambers of the Maine Legislature advanced a version of a bill that would make it easier for school staff to restrain and seclude students, weakening a law passed in 2021 restricting the use of practices that experts say cause lasting trauma. Maine has historically led the country in its use of these practices, which include physically immobilizing students and placing them in small rooms, with educators predominantly using them on students with disabilities. Restraint and seclusion practices have been used more than 22,000 times in Maine in some years, and the real number is even higher, since many large districts do not submit their data to the state despite reporting being required by the 2021 law. This year, citing increased issues with student behavior, some teachers and administrators pushed to relax the restrictions. 'It broke him, and it broke me': Parents, educators describe trauma from restraint and seclusion Despite disability rights advocates sounding the alarm at the public hearing for the bill, lawmakers in both the Maine House of Representatives and the Senate voted to pass LD 1248. 'While most states are looking at bills this session that provide greater protections for students and more resources for educators, Maine is one of the few states that is looking to roll back protections for students,' said Ben Jones, director of legal and policy initiatives for Lives in the Balance, a Maine-based national nonprofit that offers training for schools on how to move away from restraint and seclusion.'It is a serious disappointment.' Under Maine law, restraint and seclusion are only supposed to be used in case of emergencies, where the student's behavior poses 'imminent risk of serious physical injury' to themselves or others. The original proposal changed that to risk of injury after some educators said they interpreted the law to mean they couldn't use these practices to prevent a potentially dangerous situation unless a teacher could be injured severely enough to seek outside medical care. 'Staff are being hit, they're being bit, but it doesn't meet the threshold of serious imminent danger, because a 5-year-old isn't going to [cause] an injury that requires medical care,' said Gardiner-area Superintendent Patricia Hopkins during the April 23 public hearing. The amended version of the bill defines 'serious physical injury' to mean 'any impairment of the physical condition of a person, whether self-inflicted or inflicted by someone else, that requires a medical practitioner, including, but not limited to, a school nurse, to evaluate or treat the person.' This definition was already included in Chapter 33, the Maine Department of Education rules governing restraint and seclusion. Another aspect of the bill allows educators to move students without their consent without having to document the incident as a restraint. Atlee Reilly of Disability Rights Maine told lawmakers at the work session for LD 1248 that if the bill passes, schools will no longer have to report these kinds of incidents where staff forcibly move students, which he explained will likely mean the number of documented restraints could decrease. 'What we're going to do is take a whole class of stuff — like the physical management of students that I think most people would look at and say, that child's being restrained — and say it's no longer restraint,' Reilly said. He added, 'It doesn't mean that people are going to be putting their hands on kids less.' Jones said these changes 'were conjured up by schools' lawyers who will surely use the new language as legal cover to protect schools, not kids.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
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
