Handcuffs and the WWF Room, in a Public School
September 16, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Handcuffs? The “WWF room”—a vacant classroom, “used to encourage students to wrestle with one another and teaching assistants to release aggression”?
As reported in WRAL today, these were methods used to improperly restrain autistic children in the Wake County School District in North Carolina. This morning, Disability Rights North Carolina, a disability rights groups, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the Wake County Board of Education.
Here’s more about restraints and about timeout rooms. And handcuffs.
Small wonder that parents and school districts become adversaries.
Thanks for posting this, Kristina. The fact that it happened in my own back yard is chilling. I always considered this area to be somewhat “enlightened” when it came to autism. Guess I was dead wrong.
In the document, “Disability Rights North Carolina complaint against Wake County Board of Education”, posted in the sidebar of the news story,
The refusal by Defendants to produce the requested data or permit the requested access prevents DRNC, the state and federally designated Protection and Advocacy System for persons with disabilities in North Carolina, from fulfilling its statutory mandates of investigating allegations of abuse and neglect as well as providing protection and advocacy services for individuals with disabilities.
The concerning part is that DRNC has to appeal for injunctive relief from the court in order to proceed in their statutory mandate because there is no relief by law for them to respond to the school’s refusal to cooperate. The invocation of “privacy” is familiar but I am also familiar with it being used to keep advocates, outside consultants, and parents from finding out what is going on in a school, contrary to intent in spirit of protection of the students.
I hope DRNC obtains the relief so that they can perform the independent evaluation and get to the bottom of what occurred.
An article from the News Observer mentions Carroll Middle School as the school where an autistic student’s ankles were handcuffed.
From the story:
“…According to law, organizations such as DRNC “shall have reasonable unaccompanied access to public and private facilities … when necessary to conduct a full investigation on an incident of abuse or neglect.”
“We’ve agreed to allow our staff to be interviewed by their attorneys,” Wake County schools spokesman Michael Evans said. “We’ve allowed them to come in to see the school, the classroom.”
According to document and e-mails obtained by WRAL News, DRNC can only have access to the classroom after school hours, and if they choose, teachers can contact the group. Student information is off limits. …”
How hollow is the right to unaccompanied access to conduct a full investigation without the right to see the room in actual use?
As Regan said, privacy (as well as HIPAA rules) are often used to restrict access to schools by those with a legitimate reason for having access. Even if the DRNC got releases from all of the parents of the kids (which they should not have to do, the public school being a public place and all), the school would undoubtedly still claim privacy issues for the teachers.
Videocameras, I say! Let all public areas of all schools (I would exempt bathrooms and administrative offices) have AV recordings constantly. Schools would be required to retain all tapes/digital recordings for one year. When any incident happened, the first thing that would happen would be that all interested parties would “view the tape” just like they do for disputed calls in professional sports. No student could be punished without videotaped evidence, and schools would be presumed guilty in allegations of abuse if they could not produce the tape (so that recordings weren’t conveniently lost.
Joe
What are these people thinking? I just don’t get it!