Global Crisis

A local story went national yesterday. A mother arrived at school to find her child separated from the other kids and wearing a garbage bag. According to the mother one official defended the practice by saying since there was no rule explicitly against it, it wasn't actionable.

Meanwhile, Chicago Public Schools is cutting vast sums of money from special ed in an unprecedented way (after the school year has already started).

Mark Brown, at Chicago Sun-Times, went to CPS' press conference and wrote that this is a calculated move to push kids out of special ed. Special ed is expensive.

In a Facebook post, quoted with permission, activist and former mayoral candidate Jesus Chuy Campuzano agreed. He posted this picture of a slide which demonstrates how CPS is planning to tear apart their special ed program.


I also have a number of other stories from parents I hope to be sharing in a forthcoming piece. It's not good.

In Georgia, a 6 year old with special needs was placed in handcuffs:

When a Georgia mother arrived at her 6-year-old son’s school last week in response to a call that he was misbehaving, she was greeted by a shocking surprise: Her first grader was in handcuffs.

Lakaisha Reid’s 6-year-old son Patrick is a special needs student at Pine Ridge Elementary in Stone Mountain, Ga. On the morning of December 5, Reid got a call from the school asking her to pick up her son and bring him home early. “They said he wasn’t having a good day,” Reid tells Yahoo Parenting. “My husband and I walked into the school and heard my son yelling and screaming.” The couple found him in a room on his knees with his hands cuffed behind his back. The school resource officer was standing behind Patrick, holding him in place.

In Washington, a 6 year old with special needs has been told he can't ride the bus without, basically, a straitjacket. 

Dean's son, Wyatt, is a first grade student the Hood Canal School in Skokomish. The 6-year old was diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder, a behavioral issue, when he was younger, Dean says, and has had discipline issues on the school bus.

The family now faces a tough decision: allow Wyatt to be restrained on the bus or find alternate transportation to school.

"It just flat-out violates everything as far as any civil rights I would think anybody would ever have," Dean said.

The district calls the restraints a "safety vest," and says it only uses them after multiple discussions with both a child and the parents, Superintendent Shawn Batstone said Tuesday. Parents must sign off on use of the restraints before they are deployed.

Behavioral issues can be really challenging for everyone, including the child in question. I don't know all the specifics of either case. I wonder, though, why there isn't a 1:1 aide for Wyatt on the bus? Why use a transportation system that requires the bus driver to do anything but drive? My son does not have specific behavioral disorders, but for the first year he had an aide on the bus every day (we put him on the regular bus as a means of increasing his degree of inclusion).

Mostly, I just want to say this: Any intervention, accommodation, or response to special needs that ends up with handcuffs on a six year old is a FAILED INTERVENTION.