AUGUSTA, Maine — Lawmakers are expected to vote on a bill this session that would eliminate the practice of setting apart students, known as "seclusion," and limit the use of restraint in all Maine schools.
This comes on the heels of data from the U.S. Department of Education, showing school staff in Maine restrain more students per capita than any other state. The data also shows Maine secludes students at the second-highest rate in the country.
Reports filed with the Maine Department of Education (DOE) also reveal that more than 90 percent involve students with disabilities, despite a current law that is supposed to reduce those numbers.
Deb Davis's son Teddy has Asperger's which is on the Autism spectrum. He had just started kindergarten and told a teacher he wasn't ready to leave the playground.
"He ended up in the dirt being restrained," Davis said. She wasn't informed that her son had been restrained.
"It was shocking and scary for my son, I remember him coming off the bus and he looked shook up," Davis said.
Davis became an advocate for children with disabilities and took part in writing state regulations concerning seclusion, Chapter 33, more than 8 years ago. Regulations governing the use of restraints and seclusion and requiring districts and private special education schools to report incidents to the state every year. They are only meant to be used in emergencies when students pose an impending threat to their own or others' safety. These practices were used nearly 23,000 times during the 2018-19 school year, and 90 percent involve students with disabilities.
Atlee Reilly, managing attorney for Disability Rights Maine testified at a public hearing recently before the committee on Education and Cultural Affairs. He supports a bill, LD 1373, that would ban seclusion outright and limit the use of restraints, including on the student's disability, or medical or psychiatric condition.
"We have normalized this intervention, and the level of violence against children," Reilly said.
Michelle Hathaway, the director of the Margaret Murphy Centers for Children. More than half a dozen campuses serve students age 2 to 20 with developmental and intellectual disabilities. She is opposed to the bill, because she says it would take away tools her staff is trained to use in emergency situations, which can happen hundreds of times a day.
"We have students who have blinded themselves, who have detached retinas, who have cauliflower ears from scar tissues from years of hitting themselves," Hathaway said.
Davis, meanwhile, says her son, who is now a sophomore in high school, hasn't had any more interventions. She says tens of thousands of incidents each year can go down with more behavioral support programs to help special needs students succeed.
The Maine DOE submitted written testimony on LD 1373 to the Committee on Education and Cultural Affairs: