UPDATED April 17, 2023 with more information from by Ted Fisher.
After a former special educator in the Harwood Unified Union School District (HUUSD) raised the issue of restraint and seclusion in the district last spring, the school board formed a subcommittee to review the district’s policy on the use of restraint and seclusion. Data from the last five years show high instances of these practices in HUUSD schools compared to other schools in the state. The HUUSD Board held its first reading of the draft policy at its April 12, 2023, meeting.
The draft policy bans the use of prone and supine restraints, which Dr. Melissa Houser said in public comment at the meeting are most likely to cause death by asphyxiation in children. Washington-Chittenden State Representative Theresa Wood has introduced legislation in the House to amend Vermont Board of Education Rule 4500 to prohibit prone and supine restraint, which are prohibited in 28 states.
According to testimony by Ted Fisher, director of communications and legislative affairs for the Agency of Education, before the House Committee on Education on April 13, 2023, 125 cases of restraint and seclusion were reported to the AOE in Vermont schools from October 2022 to date. Fisher’s testimony qualified that “Data only comes to AOE in the following cases: There is death, injury requiring outside medical treatment or hospitalization to staff or student as a result of a restraint or seclusion; or physical restraint or seclusion has been used for more than thirty (30) minutes; or physical restraint or seclusion has been used in violation of these rules, including the use of any prohibited restraint or seclusion. Of those 125 instances reported to the AOE, 80 represented cases where physical restraint was used for more than 30 minutes and 36 represented cases where physical restraint or seclusion was used in violation of Rule 4500, which governs restraint and seclusion in schools. Five instances represented cases of injury or death.
The HUUSD draft policy states, “The administrative procedures shall include at least the following components: Notwithstanding Vermont State Board of Education Rule 4502.1.1, a prohibition on the use of prone or supine restraint in all district schools.” It continues, “Notwithstanding Vermont State Board of Education Rule 4502.2, a prohibition on the use of seclusion in all district schools, except in situations where physical restraint is contraindicated for a particular student.”
Dr. Houser, a family physician and founder of the nonprofit All Brains Belong VT, took issue with seclusion still being permitted under the policy in some situations. Houser spoke about a patient of hers who is a student in the HUUSD and has experienced both restraint and seclusion, which led to the student having post-traumatic stress disorder. “The concern I have about your policy draft relates to the language used about allowing for seclusion in situations where physical restraint is contraindicated,” she said. “In the instance of my patient, this was a small child who was dragged to a closet-sized room approximately 4x9 [feet] and was confined alone, unable to escape. When an adult finally opened the door after the child screamed themselves to exhaustion for 90 minutes, they saw that the child had removed all their clothes, scratched up their body and urinated all over themselves. Four years later, this child is experiencing post-traumatic stress.”
“I have a problem with seclusion being in there,” said policy chair and school board member Ashley Woods. “It’s really traumatic. Seclusion is a real stumbling point for many people. It’s putting a kid in a room with the door shut and they have the expectation that they cannot get out. That is terrifying. Some of this language has to be in here but we have to shape it so it does back up what we want to prohibit.”
When board chair Kristen Rodgers proposed a straw poll asking whether the board should vote on warning the draft policy as is at the board’s next meeting for approval in June, policy committee and school board member Cindy Senning said, “I’d like us to continue the discussion about seclusion and have a discussion with [superintendent] Mike [Leichliter] and Jon [Berliner, director of student support services.”
“There’s no seclusion happening in our district,” board vice chair Kelley Hackett said.
“I think we did our very best to revise this policy to completely take out prone and supine restraint and, honestly, 99.99% of seclusions,” policy committee and board member Tori Taravella said. “As Mike has told us before, the doors of all the seclusion rooms in Harwood buildings have been taken off.”
“We are going up the edge of doing the right thing and we are so close,” board member Life LeGeros said. “This is what equity and integrity and leadership is about, to say, ‘this isn’t right, we’re going to make sure we do everything in our power to ensure that we’re not traumatizing kids.’ At the end of the day, we just have to say, ‘let’s go all the way.’ If we allow this carve out and something happened in the future, we have to recognize that’s because we left that possibility there in the policy. I would really love for the committee to revisit the draft.”
“I strongly recommend we move forward,” board member Ben Clark said. “The committee has taken input and carefully crafted this language. They have done their due diligence.”
Rodgers said that, if the board wanted to make changes to the draft policy, there would be a second reading on May 10 and, if the board was satisfied with the changes, it would be warned for May 24 with a special meeting in June to adopt the policy. In a straw poll, the board voted 7-5 to vote to warn the policy as written on April 19 to adopt in June.
The board referenced having received public emails regarding the policy. The Valley Reporter and the Waterbury Roundabout have requested copies of those emails. This article will be updated as those emails are received.
Here is a link to Ted Fisher’s testimony before the House Committee on Education:
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