Wake schools will pay $450,000, make changes after a child was repeatedly put in closet
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The Wake County school system will pay a family $450,000 and change how it restrains and secludes students after being accused of confining a disabled elementary school student in a closet more than 20 times.
The parents of a student at Scotts Ridge Elementary School in Apex had accused Wake in state and federal lawsuits of hiding how it repeatedly restrained and secluded their daughter. The federal lawsuit was dismissed earlier this month after Wake reached a settlement with the family.
As part of a settlement, Wake has agreed to notify parents by the end of the school day if their child is restrained or secluded. Under state law, Wake has only been required to notify parents if their children are secluded for more than 10 minutes or more than the time allowed in their school behavior intervention plan.
Other parts of the settlement include making available to parents any available video footage if their child is restrained or secluded in school.
Stacey Gahagan, the attorney for the family, said in an interview Friday that the parents hope the settlement will result in restraint and seclusion only being used in the most serious of situations. Gahagan said it’s especially important for parents to know about the district’s practices now that the school year is about to start.
“They really want to avoid this happening to anyone else’s child,” Gahagan said.
The school district said it was in the process of issuing a statement on the settlement.
Child repeatedly placed in closet
In 2020, Jocelyn Pease filed a federal lawsuit and a complaint on behalf of her daughter with the state Office of Administrative Hearings.
State Administrative Law Judge Stacey Bawtinhimer ruled in 2021 that Wake had violated federal and state law in how it handled the restraint and seclusion of the student, The News & Observer previously reported.
In 2022, a state review officer upheld Bawtinhimer’s ruling.
The review officer’s decision prompted Wake to file its own federal lawsuit against the family. The two federal lawsuits by Wake and the family were later consolidated. Both were dismissed as part of the settlement.
Bawtinhimer said the student, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and several other disabilities, was placed in seclusion at least 22 times from September 2017 to February 2019. Bawtinhimer said the school used euphemisms to hide from the parents that the child had been secluded or restrained.
Bawtinhimer described the seclusion as placing the student alone in a closet in a teacher’s lounge and holding the door closed to keep her inside. She was secluded for periods of between 10 minutes and 87 minutes.
According to Bawtinhimer, the student was secluded for things like flipping back her chair, flipping markers, grabbing a teacher’s arm and “being annoying.”
Schools are allowed to seclude students, placing them in a different room from other students, to prevent injury. But they’re not allowed to seclude them solely for disciplinary reasons, according to Disability Rights NC.
“If this were happening in a general education classroom, students would tell parents that day,” Gahagan said. “When you have it in class with students who have communication deficits or who are non-verbal, it’s very difficult for them to express to the parents what happened..”
Student ‘manhandled’ by school staff
The family didn’t learn about the restraint and seclusion until Feb. 21, 2019, when the mother of the student’s best friend came to Scotts Ridge to have lunch with her child.
The student wasn’t allowed to have lunch with her non-disabled peers that day because of misbehaving in the classroom. But instead of serving her punishment, she went to the cafeteria to sit with her best friend.
Three special-education staff members and the principal began to surround the then 9-year-old fourth-grader, who crouched in a fetal position and asked them to leave her alone. Bawtinhimer said the principal “grabbed her underneath her arms and informed (the student) that she needed to come with her.”
Bawtinhimer said staff didn’t try to calm her down but instead restrained her even though she “was not a danger to herself or others.” She was placed in seclusion. The student “did not hit or push staff until after the school staff ‘manhandled’ her,” Bawtinhimer wrote in her decision.
The mother of the student’s best friend recorded the incident on her phone and showed it to the child’s parents.
Transparency and accountability
Wake agreed to adopt several “transparency and accountability measures” as part of its agreement with the family.
The school system agreed to “correct” its data with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on how often restraint and seclusion was used from 2016 through the 2021-22 school year.
Other parts of the agreement include:
▪ Include in the Elementary Behavior Support (EBS) manual visual examples and written explanations of physical restraint techniques that district staff are trained to use. The student had been placed in the EBS program, which is intended for students with “significant behavioral and/or emotional deficits.”
▪ Students will only be placed in the EBS program with the consent of the parents or at a formal Individualized Education Plan meeting.
▪ At the start of each school year, families in the EBS program will receive a document explaining the district’s seclusion and restraint practices.
▪ Wake will publish on its website semiannual reports of how often students are restrained and secluded.
▪ Wake will hire an independent consultant to review the EBS program through the 2025-26 school year.
Gahagan said the additional information from Wake should encourage parents in the EBS program to take steps such as examine the seclusion room is in their child’s school and ask about what kinds of restraint holds would be used.
Financial compensation
Under the agreement, Wake will pay the family $450,000. Part of that money will go toward reimbursing the family for the services it paid for when it pulled the child from Scotts Ridge to attend a private school.
The student will return to the district. Wake has agreed to provide additional services to the student to help her in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.
This isn’t the first time Wake has paid a family that claimed its child was illegally restrained and secluded.
In 2020, Wake paid $450,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a student at Southeast Raleigh High School. The family said students with disabilities at the school were victims of an abusive teacher who was physically aggressive and improperly isolated the students in a storage room during the 2018-19 school year.
This story was originally published August 18, 2023 at 1:24 PM with the headline "Wake schools will pay $450,000, make changes after a child was repeatedly put in closet."
