JCPS restrained thousands of kids, but didn't report it

Students in Jefferson County Public Schools were physically held down or confined to a room more than 4,400 times last school year - an average of nearly 25 times a day. But the state's largest school district only correctly reported 174 of those instances to the state, despite a regulation requiring JCPS to report all instances of restraint or seclusion.

After questions were raised by the Courier-Journal, JCPS officials confirmed the discrepancy and said they knew the numbers reported to the state were incomplete. Superintendent Donna Hargens said the problem arose when schools reported problems to an internal database, not the state system.   She said the state now has been informed about the problem.

JCPS board member Linda Duncan called the underreported cases a "shocker." She said that restraints and seclusions are often used on special-needs students "and that's where we need to be particularly careful. ... The discrepancy is troubling to me."

See Kentucky's rules regarding the restraining and secluding of students

The use of such measures has become a hot-button issue in recent years in school districts across the country, given evidence of potential abuse of the techniques as well as the possibility for physical and mental harm to children. As outlined in Kentucky's 2013 regulation, restraint and seclusion may only be used if a student's behavior poses imminent danger of physical harm to the student or others.

JCPS bus problems underreported, review shows

"A situation of imminent danger should be the only time (restraint) is used," said Ron Hager, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. "I can't imagine 4,000 incidents of serious imminent danger in a district, unless there's a systemwide problem with how your school district is managing behavior."

Brent McKim, president of the county's teachers association, said teachers care about their kids and are often forced to make split-second decisions about what to do in scary situations.

He said that more students are bringing more troubles with them to school, "and some of that leads to students acting out in physically aggressive ways. When that happens, teachers have a responsibility to try to maintain the safety of all their students."

McKim added that everyone "shares the goal of minimizing the times that (restraint and seclusion) occur but that's easier said than done. It's easy to second-guess a teacher after the fact when someone wasn't in the scary situation that the teacher was in."

While even critics say that the use of restraint is sometimes warranted, there is worry that the technique can be abused. That was evident last year at the now-shuttered Kennedy Metro Middle, where a JCPS investigation found evidence that at least some school staff slammed students' heads into walls, pinned down students with their bodies and locked kids in a "calming room" for misbehavior.

Even when the techniques are done by the books, experts say correctly reporting how often they're used is crucial.

"When good data isn’t collected, restraint and seclusion remain hidden and secret, and their use increases," said Jessica Butler, a Washington, D.C.-based national disability advocate. "For years, there have been reports that schools don’t tell parents, even in states with notice requirements. These are such dangerous practices ... that good data collection is essential."

National problem

A 2009 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found hundreds of cases of alleged abuse or death from the use of restraint or seclusion, including a report from Texas where a 230-pound teacher pinned a student to the ground with his body, killing the 14-year-old. The GAO report said it was unclear whether problems of abuse or death related to restraint or seclusion were widespread but said the cases identified "raise serious issues."

"Even if no physical injury is sustained ... individuals can be severely traumatized during restraint," the report said. It also noted that nearly all the hundreds of allegations of abuse or death it identified involved students with disabilities.

The state education department does not endorse restraint or seclusion. Quite the contrary.

"The evidence is clear - restraint and seclusion are ineffective behavior modification techniques that have potentially deadly consequences," the Kentucky Department of Education wrote in a 2013 report. "The evidence is equally clear that reducing or eliminating restraint and seclusion produces positive outcomes for students, staff and schools."

A JCPS spokeswoman said that while the district is not surprised by its restraint and seclusion numbers, its goal is to implement more positive strategies.

"Our goal is to be proactive so ultimately we can reduce the number," spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin said.

The numbers

JCPS' internal database of restraint and seclusion incidents shows that while the majority of JCPS schools reported at least one incident last year, the numbers were often widely different from school to school. It is unclear whether those differences were due to differences in reporting or the number of actual incidents at each school.

Superintendent Hargens told the Courier-Journal that JCPS has known about the problems with inaccurate numbers reported to the state since last school year. She said schools were told to enter the data into both the district's internal system and the state's system, but "we have so many users and it's a complex system. ... And people believed the data was being taken from the internal system."

Regardless, JCPS apparently did not make sure that the data was correctly put into the state database. And when the Kentucky Department of Education in May, in a routine check, asked JCPS to verify the data before it was uploaded online, JCPS officials just confirmed that the numbers were the same as what had originally been reported to the state, a JCPS spokeswoman said.

The state data, which is posted online for the public to see, says that JCPS students were restrained 168 times last school year and secluded 6 times.

JCPS said that in actuality, students were restrained or secluded 4,403 times last school year.

Adding to the confusion, JCPS said it reported 1,115 instances of restraint and seclusion -- still far short of the actual 4,403 -- to the state but said only 174 correctly registered in the proper category.

Get more JCPS news

Amending the report

Hargens only notified the state about the discrepancy on March 3 - after the Courier-Journal inquired about the discrepancy - sending a letter to Kentucky Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt via email.

In the letter, Hargens told the commissioner that JCPS is working to figure out how to import the data to the state database, and will enter the data by hand for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 if need be.

"Our goal at JCPS is to transparently communicate with you and transmit data to you effectively and with integrity," Hargens wrote in her letter to the state.

As JCPS works to update the state database, it's possible that the new count of 4,403 instances still understates the full extent of how many times students are pinned down or secluded in the state's largest school district.

The Courier-Journal's own review of documents turned up a couple cases of apparent restraint of students that did not make it into JCPS' internal database nor the one it reported to the state.

In one of those instances, detailed in JCPS' own investigation of the incident, witnesses report a middle school girl being slammed to the ground by an assistant principal. And at least one witness said the assistant principal, who it was noted was not trained in restraint techniques, straddled the girl, pinning her down as she laid on her back.

According to the investigation, the girl later reported hip and back pain from the incident and the girl's mother reported never having been told about the restraint from the school until a staff member mentioned it to her months later.

What's next for Louisville basketball?

When asked how schools determine whether to document an incident as a restraint, Hargens said all cases where restraint techniques are used should be documented. She said if there are cases where that hasn't happened, "that would be a problem," adding that she would have to review those instances.

Butler said that many parents have no idea what is going on in their own schools related to restraint or seclusion. "This is important for parents to know, to know what's going on in the schools," Butler said. She said sometimes the parents of students who are restrained may not even know what has happened. "With 4,400 incidents, was every parent notified?"

Meanwhile, even if the vast majority of cases are examples of appropriately using restraint and seclusion, JCPS also has experience with poor uses of those techniques - notably last school year at the now-shuttered Kennedy Metro Middle alternative school.

A district investigation of the goings-on at that school recounted reports from several students and a staff member detailing how another staff member "rammed (students') heads into the wall, pinned students with their body weight and repeatedly smacked their fingers."

The investigation also expressed concerns about the school's "calming room," which was used for seclusion. The report found the room had a door that students could not open from the inside, despite regulations requiring that seclusion settings have an unlocked and unobstructed door. Some students interviewed as part of the investigation also reported the room as being extremely cold.

Subscribe Today | Courier-Journal.com

Hargens stressed that staff uses restraint and seclusion as a way to keep students safe.

"It's to protect the child," Hargens said. "The professionals decide when that's needed and then they document it. ... This is not something done lightly."

Hargens said JCPS may have to pay someone to manually enter the missing data into the state database, but said staff is still trying to figure out whether the information can be moved more efficiently.

"We will do whatever we need to do now that we know about this," she said.

Reporter Allison Ross can be reached at (502) 582-4241. Follow the Courier-Journal's education team at Facebook.com/SchooledCJ.

Bevin takes to Facebook video to prod House

Kentucky's regulation

Among other things, the regulation mandates that:

• Physical restraint or seclusion may only be used if a student’s behavior poses imminent danger of physical harm to self or others. 
• Parents must be notified of any incidents of restraint or seclusion, with reports sent to the state.
• Physical restraint may only be implemented by a core team of school personnel who are trained in restraint techniques, except in emergency situations.
• Prone restraints - where a child is held face-down on the ground - and mechanical restraints - which is the use of straps or other equipment to restrict a student's movement - are banned.
• All school personnel must be trained to use an array of positive behavior supports and interventions to increase appropriate student behavior.

Definitions

Seclusion: Involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area. This is different from a time-out or an in-school suspension.

Restraint: Holds that either immobilize or reduce the ability of a student to move his or her torso, arms, legs or head freely. It does not include temporary touching or holding a student's hand, arm or shoulder to encourage a student to move voluntarily to a safe location.

Mechanical restraint: Use of straps or other devices or equipment to restrict a student's movement. 

Prone restraint: Student is restrained in a face-down position with physical pressure applied to the student's body to keep him or her in that position. Supine restraint is similar, but with the student lying in a face-up position. Kentucky regulations state that neither restraint is to be used in schools.

Parental rights

Parents are supposed to be notified when a restraint or a seclusion is used on their child within 24 hours. If a parent cannot be reached within those 24 hours, schools are supposed to send a notification through the mail.

Parents whose children have been restrained or secluded may, under Kentucky regulations, request a debriefing session with the school to go over what happened.