New Bill Stops Forcible Discipline in Schools

By Bridget Tyler on March 8th, 2010

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The question of whether children in school deserve the same constitutional rights that adults demand for themselves has been an open debate for a long time. While freedom of speech issues and freedom from random locker searches and drug tests are less than clear cut, the question of whether 9th Amendment bans on cruel and unusual punishment should apply to school children seems like it should be hard to argue with.

Which is probably why the House of Representatives easily passed a bill on March 3rd to restrict the use of forcible restraint and seclusion on children in schools that receive federal funding.  A companion bill will be debated on the floor of the Senate soon.

According to the New York Times, the bill was in part inspired by a government report last year that found that hundreds of kids of all ages were being emotionally traumatized and physically harmed by being restrained or locked up.  Sometimes even tied to chairs.  Even worse, often the children who were treated this way were kids with developmental disabilities or who were in special education.

In one particularly horrifying incident a special ed 8th grader, Cedric Napoleon, was killed by his 8th grade teacher. “Cedric struggled as he was being held in his chair, so the teacher put him in a face down or in a prone restraint and sat on him,” Cedric’s foster mother, Toni Price, testified before the House Education and Labor Committee in May.

“He struggled and said repeatedly: ‘I can’t breathe.’ ‘If you can speak, you can breathe,’ she snapped at him,” Price relayed. “Shortly after that, he stopped speaking and he stopped struggling.  He stopped moving at all.  The teacher continued to restrain him.  Finally the teacher and aide put Cedric back in his chair. The aide wiped drool off his mouth and they sat him up.  But he slumped over and slipped out of his chair.”

Not all of the Representatives in the debate thought that not allowing schools to use restraints that restrict kid’s breathing or mechanical restraints (except in cases of extreme and imminent danger) or behavior controlling drugs (unless prescribed by a doctor) was a good idea. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., argued that Congress should not tie schools hands when it came to discipline and that “the states and not the federal government should take the lead on developing and implementing these policies.”

His Republican colleague, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington disagreed: “This critical piece of legislation confronts the unimaginable situation in schools across the country whereby some of our nation’s most vulnerable children are treated in an inhumane and degrading manner.”

The American Federation of Teachers backs the bill.