Protect Our Students and Staff: Cameras in Special Education Classrooms
Petition for Greater Safety, Transparency, and Accountability in Washington Schools
We are asking parents, educators, school districts, community members, and Washington State leaders to support the use of security cameras in classrooms, beginning with special education classrooms serving our most vulnerable students.

Many students with disabilities are nonverbal, have limited communication abilities, or may not be able to clearly tell their parents what happened during their school day. Families send their children to school trusting that they will be safe, respected, and properly cared for.

At the same time, teachers, paraeducators, and other school staff deserve protection as well. When an allegation is made against a staff member, video evidence could help establish what actually occurred rather than leaving families, employees, and school administrators with conflicting accounts and unanswered questions.

Cameras can protect both sides.

What We Are Asking For
We are asking Washington lawmakers and school districts to develop policies that would:

Prioritize security cameras in special education classrooms, particularly classrooms serving nonverbal students, students with significant communication disabilities, and other students who may have difficulty reporting abuse, neglect, mistreatment, or unsafe situations.
Eventually consider cameras in general education classrooms as well, creating greater transparency and protection for students and school employees.
Protect student and staff privacy. Recordings should not be publicly accessible or available for parents to watch live. Access should be strictly controlled and permitted only for legitimate reasons, such as reviewing a reported incident, investigating an allegation, or addressing a serious safety concern.
Establish clear rules for who can access recordings, how long recordings are retained, and when they can be reviewed. Strong safeguards should prevent recordings from being copied, shared, posted online, or misused.
Protect private changing and toileting areas. We are NOT asking for video cameras to record children while they are changing clothes, being changed, or using the restroom.
For students with disabilities who require assistance with diapering, toileting, or changing, we ask lawmakers to explore a privacy-protective solution, such as appropriately regulated audio-only safety measures outside or in designated changing areas, if legally permissible, so there can be additional accountability while children's bodies and personal privacy remain protected.

Why This Matters
For the parent of a child who cannot speak or explain what happened at school, sending that child into a classroom requires an enormous amount of trust.

A nonverbal child may come home upset, frightened, injured, or behaving differently and may have no way to tell their family what happened.

Families deserve peace of mind.

But this petition is not against teachers or school employees.

The same cameras that could protect a student could also protect a teacher or paraeducator who is falsely accused of hurting, mistreating, or improperly restraining a child. Instead of relying only on one person's word against another's, authorized investigators could review objective evidence of what occurred.

Good educators should have protection too.

Cameras Should Be a Safeguard — Not a Surveillance Tool
This proposal is not about allowing parents to watch classrooms throughout the day or monitoring teachers' every move.

It is about creating a secure record that can be reviewed when something serious happens.

Any camera program should include strong protections for student educational records, disability information, employee privacy, and the privacy of every child in the classroom.

Recordings should be encrypted, securely stored, accessible only to specifically authorized individuals, and released or reviewed only under clearly established circumstances and applicable state and federal law.

Our Most Vulnerable Children Deserve a Voice
Some children can come home and tell their parents:

"My teacher yelled at me."

"Someone hurt me."

"I was scared."

"I was put in a room by myself."

But some children cannot.

For a child who is nonverbal or has significant communication challenges, there may be no way for a parent to know exactly what occurred.

A child's inability to speak should never mean that there is no way to determine what happened to them.

Security cameras, implemented with strong privacy protections, can provide another layer of accountability when a child cannot tell their own story.

This Can Protect Everyone
This should not be a fight between parents and educators.

Parents want their children protected.

Teachers and paraeducators want to be protected from false accusations.

School districts want accurate information when investigating incidents.

Students deserve safe learning environments.

Thoughtfully regulated security cameras can help accomplish all four.

We Are Asking Washington to Take Action
We call upon Washington State lawmakers, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, local school boards, school districts, educators, disability advocates, and families to work together to establish a responsible statewide framework for security cameras in schools.

We ask that Washington begin with classrooms serving students with significant disabilities and communication needs and study responsible expansion into other classrooms.

Our children deserve safety.

Our educators deserve protection.

Our families deserve transparency.

And when a child cannot speak for themselves, we must make sure there is a way for the truth to speak for them.

Please sign and share this petition if you believe students and school staff deserve greater safety, transparency, and accountability in our schools.