By Jenny Abamu and Rob Manning, NPR, June 5, 2019.
Every time Jennifer Tidd's son was secluded or restrained at school, she received a letter from his teachers. Her son has autism and behavioral issues, and over three years — from 2013 to 2016 — Tidd got 437 of those letters.
"I see this pile of documents that's 5 inches tall that represents hundreds of hours of being locked into a room, and I feel, you know, horrible," Tidd says.
She's sitting in her living room in Northern Virginia, her head hanging over the stack of papers. Tears are in her eyes.
"What kind of parent lets this happen to their child? ... I just trusted the school. I thought that it would work — we were at our wits' end with the behaviors and stuff. But it actually just made it worse."
Restraint and seclusion are most often used on students with disabilities or special needs — children like Tidd's son. Those terms can mean anything from holding or using restraints on students to isolating them in a separate room or space.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights requires that school districts report every time a student is restrained or secluded. And while tens of thousands of cases are reported, many suspect those numbers fall short.
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