Florida parents, advocates push for anti-seclusion law

From The Palm Beach Post in Fla.:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - For a third straight year, Florida parents and special-education advocates are trying to get a law passed that would prevent school employees from holding students with disabilities facedown or shutting them in rooms to try to control behaviors associated with their conditions.

This year, proponents have the backing of the National Autism Association, Autism Speaks and 26 state organizations that are primarily involved in medical or disabilities issues.

There's also a federal push to limit the use of such practices after a U.S. Government Accountability Office report revealed hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and several children who were killed when school and treatment center staffers used the methods.

"These are not isolated incidents," state Rep. Dorothy Hukill, the bill's sponsor, said during a news conference last week in Tallahassee.

Hukill, R-Port Orange, invited several parents, including Boynton Beach mom Phyllis Musumeci, to tell their stories.

Musumeci fought to get the Palm Beach County School District to agree to document each occasion in which a staff member restrained a child after she discovered that her son had been held down at least 80 times.

Musumeci said she missed the warning signs that her son had been traumatized. He fought going to school, didn't want to be touched and even stopped doing things he used to like, such as playing on his computer. Now her son is attending a private school for special-education students because he can't function in a district school.

"This bill will keep our children safe," she said. "It's been five years and my son is still suffering."

To help make their case, supporters of the bill (HB 81) have a grainy video of a 14-year-old autistic boy from Citrus County who was dragged on his hands and knees and thrown into a dark room by his teacher and an aide last school year. When he tried to get out of the room, the teacher slammed the door shut on his hand, leaving him in the room with a bleeding and broken finger.

The video does not show any violence on the part of the boy that precipitated the incident.

The boy's father had been asking the staff why his son had repeatedly come home from school with torn pants. It wasn't until the broken finger that Vikas Kamat found out what was really happening to his son at school.

The state Department of Children & Families found that excessive force was used, and the Department of Education said the school was in "noncompliance" regarding use of seclusion.

"It is not about blaming anybody anymore," said Kamat. "If we all look the other way and we have evidence as sick as this, what is left of us? What is left of us as human beings?"

The bill has failed in previous years, in part because of opposition from school officials who say such practices can be done safely and are needed to keep children from hurting themselves or others.

Hukill said she expects to face opposition from districts again this year.

While the bill would prohibit the use of facedown holds, which have caused children to suffocate, it would still allow school staff members to physically immobilize students whose behavior creates an immediate danger to themselves or others.

Some special-needs children have trouble controlling their behavior and can become violent, acknowledged Mark Kamleiter, the special-education lawyer who represents the Kamat family.

But Kamleiter, who worked as a special-education teacher and behavior specialist in the Pinellas County school system for five years, said there is almost always another way to teach children to control themselves instead of restraining them or locking them in a room.

"If schools cannot use that kind of punishment to deal with the behaviors, my hope is they will train people to appropriately deal with those behaviors," he said.

The bill focuses on staff training and informing parents in instances when staff members have to handle a child to keep them from hurting themselves or someone else.

Florida is among 19 states with no laws or regulations governing the use of restraint or seclusion.