NO HARM! NO HIDING!

"THEIR DOORS WERE SOUND PROOF. WHEN THEY WENT TO RESTRAIN SOMEONE. THEY SHUT THE DOOR FIRST."                                                  

       - FORMER STUDENT OF THE ACES​

-Restraint and Seclusion in the state of Arizona is not being implemented as intended, incidents of abuse are not being reported, and consequences for abuse do not exist.

-Children are being left in small dark rooms alone for hours.

-Children are coming home from school with horrific wounds inflicted on them by ADULTS: teachers, principals, and staff.

-A place where all students should feel safe, they are wishing they would die instead of return for another day of abuse.

- Abusive practices are leading to suicidal thoughts.  At school, a place where children should feel safe, some say they wish they would die rather than return for another day of abuse.  

-Statistical correlation between abused students, who carry this PTSD for the rest of their lives, and becoming homeless, imprisoned, or dead.

NO HARM! NO HIDING!

We call on the Arizona Department of Education to:

• Train and adopt non-aversive interventions that are working in schools across the nation.
• Eliminate seclusion rooms that look like prisons. If needed, make a safe sensory room, with no lock on door and always have an adult present inside the room and another adult right outside the window. Room must have a light and window.
• Develop a required, uniformed reporting mechanism for all Arizona schools to report each incident of restraint and/or seclusion.
• Compile the reports into a public report
• Enforce remediation, training, and consequences for abuse or misuse of restraint and/or seclusion.
• Criminally prosecute findings of abuse.

No Harm! No Hiding!

According to Adam Lodestone, A brief history of restrain and seclusion in our schools, published June 2, 2021- 

The types of restraints used have included, but are not limited to:

• Rope
• Cables
• Duct tape over limbs and mouths
• Gags (store bought or improvised)
• The child’s own belt or tie or sash
• Electronic appliance cables and cords

Seclusion spaces in schools have taken the form of:

• Locked and windowless room
•  Wooden crates place in a corner of the classroom
• Completely darkened broom closets which have been locked from the outside
• Foot lockers
• Large band instrument cases
• Other unthinkable spaces of containment

Seclude, isolated children are often not allowed access to a bathroom and denied access to food and water.

All of the practices described come from recent and current reports, testimonies, and news headlines.

You can find countless news articles, lawsuits, and wrongful death claims from harm caused by restraint and seclusion in our classrooms.

In Arizona, families and victims are sharing alarming accounts of abuse of restraint and seclusion.  Is this happening at the school your child attends? It is far more common than any of us what to believe. 

Here is part of some of their stories:

“My son was coming home every day with many marks on his body: armpits, back, arms as a result of their interventions when he was having negative behaviors.​ My son came back home hurt with an awful wound on his back and I just found when I removed his shirt at home… again they didn't notify he had been hurt. They repeat often the phrase "parents shouldn't know that".​” -San Tan Valley Family​

 

“I was outside and I was placed in a physical restraint by a behavioral coach… I had dislocated my shoulder recently and told him as much. Without a care for that he forced my elbows up behind my back as high as he could and proceeded to grind my face into the outdoor stucco walls like a cheese grater​…some of the staff took joy from that part of the job…Several of my classmates are either homeless, in prison or dead now…two of them are in prison for murder”

 –Autistic adult recalls his abuse from when he was a student at a ‘state certified special education school for K-12’

 

“The elementary side of the school, they put you up against the wall and apply a ton of pressure on your diaphragm. It is extremely hard to breath. You simply lose air as you try to breathe… What they do is real actual torture. If given the opportunity, I would have died to get out of what they did… they openly talked about us getting restrained over petty things, like a kid picking their scabs… Two kids in my class went to the mental hospital the day after they went to the timeout room”

-Another former student of the same school

 

"I resigned after 3 school years and sent an anonymous email reporting abuse I had witnessed. The response from the owner was not taking accountable for actions I KNOW she knew happens in her schools. She then turned the blame on me for being a witness. And deflected it from herself and supervisors."

– Para who resigned in 2021 from a ‘intensive special education school’ where vulnerable child are placed from their home schools.

 

“The staff are NOT trained to deal with behaviors. They have something called a "recovery room" where kids are taken if they are engaging in SIB or aggression towards others but it eventually got to the point where they were just thrown in there for any little thing.​ Certain kids were isolated for no reason. No one tried to do anything to improve these behaviors.”

-Former BT at ‘a private special education day school specifically designed to support students with social/emotional disabilities’

According to the biennial Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights from the 2017-2018 school year, a total of 101,990 students were subjected to restraint or seclusion during that school year. 

Of the 101,990 students, 79% of the students restrained were students with disabilities. Of the 101,990 students, 77% of the students secluded were students with disabilities.

Also noteworthy from this data collection, restraint and seclusion rates are increasing. According to this report, the 2015-2016 school year national data shows that 71% of students subjected to restraints had disabilities and 66% of students subjected to seclusion had disabilities

In 2019, The Government Accountability Office (GAO) urged the U.S. Department of Education to take “immediate action” to address the underreporting of restraint and seclusion in schools. The GAO says the Education Department has repeatedly and knowingly published inaccurate data in the civil rights data collection.

WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING IN ARIZONA AND NOT BEING REPORTED?

Please sign this petition to show lawmakers and educators that we will not tolerate abuse or misuse of restraint or seclusion in our schools!

PRISONERS ARE TREATED BETTER THAN OUR CHILDREN AT SCHOOL!!!

 NO HARM! NO HIDING!