Dive Brief:
- The Special School District of St. Louis County in Missouri has violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act through systemic and widespread use of restraint and seclusion practices, the U.S. Department of Justice charged in findings announced Monday.
- During the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years when the district was under DOJ investigation, the schools serving students with disabilities secluded more than 300 students almost 4,000 times and restrained almost 150 students 777 times. Nearly 40% of these schools' students were secluded during this time period.
- The Justice Department said the district "failed to fully cooperate" with its investigation. In a Feb. 23 statement after release of the findings, the district said it was working with its legal counsel and the Department of Justice as it reviews the department's report and findings.
Dive Insight:
The Justice Department said its investigation found the "shocking overuse of restraint and seclusion" with one school secluding 91% of its students. Another school secluded one student 186 times — or the equivalent of 101 hours or 17 days — during one school year.
The Special School District of St. Louis County, known as SSD, is the largest special education provider in Missouri and operates as its own district, according to the Justice Department. SSD partners with 22 public school districts to provide special education services. The district also operates six of its own schools, five of which serve only students with disabilities ages 4-21.
While Missouri law allows districts to adopt policies for the use of restraint and seclusion when there is imminent danger of physical harm to self or others, the practices in SSD were not "crisis responses to be used in rare emergencies but as a routine response to student behavior," the Justice Department said in a Feb. 23 letter to the district.
For instance, the department said a 2nd grader was secluded for 1 ½ hours for knocking over her teacher's coffee. Another student was secluded for 3 ½ hours for drawing on her chair, cursing and "being disrespectful," the letter said. During the time period the district was under investigation, it averaged 11 seclusions a day.
The Justice Department said the district "routinely" uses seclusion in cases where a student is engaging in self-harm, which "not only fails to protect the student's safety, but can escalate the student to engage in more serious self-harm."
Its findings into the district's practices "may well understate the scope of this noncompliance" because of the district's "refusal to fully cooperate," the letter said.
"The Justice Department will not tolerate the abuse of our most vulnerable students,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a Monday statement. “Parents should not have to worry that their children could be subjected to solitary confinement and dangerous restraint techniques at school because of their disabilities."
In its statement on Monday, the district said, "Student safety and well-being remain our top priority. We take these concerns seriously and are committed to ensuring our practices support students’ safety, learning, and dignity."
The Justice Department outlined nine remedial actions for the district to take "cooperatively" to avoid litigation. The remedies include ending the use of seclusion and prohibiting restraint unless the student's behavior poses an imminent danger of physical harm to the student or another person. The agency also is requiring the district to implement policies and procedures for suicide and self-harm prevention and to properly document all uses of restraint.
If the district and DOJ cannot reach a resolution agreement on the matter, the Justice Department said it could sue the district under Title II of the ADA.
Nationally, about 105,700 public school students were physically restrained, mechanically restrained or placed in seclusion at schools during the 2021-22 school year, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection. Black students, boys and students with disabilities are disproportionately restrained or secluded, according to the CRDC.
In Congress, bicameral and bipartisan legislation known as the Keeping All Students Safe Act would prohibit seclusion and ban certain restraint practices in schools nationwide that receive federal funding.
