Every child has the right to feel safe and included at school, but in the Northshore school district, students with disabilities are still subjected to outdated and aversive interventions of restraint and seclusion. Restraints are any hold or device such as tape or ties that limit a student’s ability to move. Seclusion is the practice of leaving students isolated and confined, sometimes for excessive periods of time and without contact or observation.  Research has shown that restraint and seclusion can have lasting traumatic effects on children, even if only used one or two times.

According to the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, in the 2017-18 school year over 100 thousand students were subjected to restraint or seclusion nationwide.  Although students with disabilities served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) represented 13% of students enrolled in public schools, 78% of students subjected to physical restraint or seclusion were disabled.  In the Northshore School District in the 2019-20 school year that number was 100%.  Only disabled students are subjected to this traumatizing practice in Northshore.

According to OSPI, in the 2019-20 school year there were 47 incidents of restraint and 68 incidents of seclusion in the Northshore School district.  All but one incident of restraint occurred at Canyon Creek Elementary.  In the preceding year, Northshore reported 161 incidents of restraint across 16 schools and 68 incidents of seclusion across 8 schools.  This looks like progress, but is it?  According to a 2019 report by the US Government Accountability Office incidents of restraint and seclusion are significantly underreported by districts nationwide.

Additionally, the number of seclusion incidents in Northshore stayed the same in 2019/20 as the prior year, 68 incidents, even though school buildings closed in March of that year and the number of schools reporting the use of seclusion decreased from 8 to 1.  That one school, Canyon Creek Elementary, more than doubled its use of seclusion, from 24 to 68 incidents.   

This is notable because Canyon Creek Elementary is where Mid-Level Social Emotional special education classrooms are located.  This is the segregated special education classroom for students with significant social/emotional and behavior needs, including students with autism or a history of trauma.  It can reasonably be assumed that incidents at that school occurred with students in this placement.   Northshore isn’t solving their seclusion problem by reducing the number of schools reporting seclusion, they are simply shuffling kids with disabilities into exclusionary classrooms that are inadequately supporting their social emotional and behavioral needs.

Northshore says they are providing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which are the primary preventative methods for problem behaviors.  However, Northshore’s application of PBIS is unclear, is inconsistent between and within schools, and is sometimes not even PBIS.  There is no district publication detailing how PBIS are applied.  Where information is provided by individual schools, the interventions described do not appear to be PBIS.  For example, the PBIS intro slide deck at Fernwood has a behavior communications form that only lists problem behaviors. This is the opposite of PBIS, which focuses more on reinforcing and communicating positive behavior choices than negative.  The slide deck also says the purpose of PBIS is “to establish a climate in which appropriate behavior is the norm,” when the real purpose of PBIS is to provide proactive and effective behavioral support.  It also fails to define interventions for the other two tiers of support (targeted groups and individuals).   

This petition asks for the Northshore School Board and Administration to correct these injustices to our disabled students by taking the following actions:

1. Immediately cease the use of seclusion in all schools and close or repurpose all isolation rooms.
2. Engage an independent expert in disability education to conduct a full, transparent, district-wide audit of the use of restraint and seclusion.  This should include: 
   1. Review of all reported incidents against student records and parent interviews to evaluate reporting accuracy.
   2.  Review of all reported incidents against student records and parent interviews to evaluate whether the student was receiving appropriate preventative interventions prior to the incident.  This should include review of access to occupational therapy and evidence-based behavior therapies for students on IEP with autism or other behavior and social/emotional needs
   3. Review of all reported incidents against student records and parent interviews and whether the student’s IEP was reviewed and appropriately adjusted to prevent future incidents.
3. Engage an independent expert in PBIS practices to conduct a full, transparent, district-wide review of Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and provide recommendations for improvement.  Review results and adopted PBIS practices should be fully documented and made public.

Sources:
WA enrollment data was taken from the OSPI enrollment data:
https://data.wa.gov/dataset/Report-Card-Enrollment-2020-21-School-Year/nvpc-yr7b
https://data.wa.gov/Education/Report-Card-Enrollment-2019-20-School-Year/gtd3-scga

WA data on inclusive practices from the National Council on disability report on The Segregation of Students with Disabilities, cited by OSPI in their Inclusionary Practices Project (IPP) LRE/Placement data:
https://ncd.gov/sites/default/files/NCD_Segregation-SWD_508.pdf
https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/specialed/inclusion/IPP-Data-Update-Year-2.pdf

WA & Northshore data on restraint & seclusion were computed from the OSPI Statewide data:
https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/health-safety/school-safety-center/school-safety-resource-library/restraint-and-isolation

National data on restraint & seclusion were reported by the US Dept. of Ed. Civil Rights Data Collection:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/restraint-and-seclusion.pdf

GAO report “Education Should Take Immediate Action to Address Inaccuracies in Federal Restraint and Seclusion Data”
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-19-551r

Fernwood Intro to PBIS:
https://fernwood.nsd.org/resources/mtss/intro-to-pbis