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The Story Behind the Bill: Rep. Miller Finds School Discipline too Extreme

Washington D.C., February 2, 2010
Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act (H.R. 4247 — Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.): a bill that would prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint and seclusion in schools.

Status: Referred to the House Education and Labor Committee’s Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education subcommittee, Jan. 4.

Curtis Decker, the executive director of the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN), remembers when he first heard about children being secluded and restrained in schools. The parents of an American Indian girl with Down syndrome found out their daughter was being tied to her chair at school when they went to pick her up one day.

That was six or seven years ago, Decker recalled, and he and his staff discussed it in a meeting as an isolated case.

Then they started hearing other, similar stories. School employees sat on a girl in Wisconsin as a punishment for blowing bubbles in her milk. A child in Michigan had an epileptic seizure on the first day of school and died after school officials sat on him. A school in Tennessee had metal-door-enclosed seclusion rooms that looked like “prison cells from World War II,” NDRN senior staff attorney Jane Hudson said.

Read the full post here.

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