restraint of children is not new to this committee last year we held hearings to examine allegations of abuse and death in teens and residential treatment programs which led us to pass h r nine eleven earlier this year this bill establishes basic health and safety standards in those programs and was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support that's because when we're talking about keeping our children safe it is not a partisan issue it's a moral obligation sadly we're here again to talk about the seclusion restraint but this time we're looking at children our nation's public and private schools in january i asked the government accountability office to investigate whether allegations of deadly and abusive seclusion and restrain our schools are founded and widespread simply put the answer is yes what they found is alarming eye opening and it's going to send shock waves in every corner of this country as it should tell us very shortly the hundreds of students in this country have been victims of abuse in school in some cases this abuse has been fatal is still not limited though it is not limited to students with disabilities it's happening more often to these vulnerable children we will hear today from from two parents and gatos and toni price whose lives have been devastated by teachers and classroom aides who went too far i thank them for traveling here today and for having the courage to speak publicly about the trauma that they have experienced federal law to restrict the use of seclusion restraints to emergency circumstances for children in hospitals and community based residential treatment facilities and other facilities supported by federal dollars yet these rules do not apply to public or private schools this means an untrained medical professional it is  forbidden from inappropriate to restrain a patient and if they do there are laws for civically targeted to address such behavior but i'm training class and staff are abusing students in schools without any accountability because of a lack of federal oversight our children are bearing physical and emotional burden of a system designed to fail them such regulation oversight varies greatly many states have no law specifically governing the appropriate use of seclusion restraint in schools and parents often are unaware of the use of these abuses until their child comes home with bruises or tragically can't come home at all school is a place for students to learn grow and thrive in families and communities trust teachers and school administrators to keep children safe yet some educators are misusing behavioral interventions interventions that were intended only to be used in emergencies as a last resort for discipline or conveniences non emergency situations last year alone in my home state of california california  reported more than fourteen thousand three hundred cases of seclusion restraint another emergency interventions we don't know how many of these cases were in real emergencies recent reports document appalling stories of teachers tying children to the chairs taping their mouths shut using handcuffs denying them food fracturing bones locking them in small dark spaces and sitting on them until they turn blue one might start to wonder whether what could possibly cause a teacher in a class in maine to abuse a child in this way well we know that these what these children well we know what these children did they fidgeted in their chairs they were unwilling to follow directions in some cases they left the room or avoided the difficult task of yours or are often manifestations of a child's disability yet the teachers who are often not appropriately trained to physically intervene are restraining children anyway the vast majority of teachers and staff work in the schools or are caring professionals on the daily basis are making a difference in the lives of the children they teach but teachers and staff were abusing children must be held accountable for their actions at a minimum we should ensure that our teachers are supported or purple lead to training classroom management resources i know educators are struggling with managing student behavior on many levels and school violence is a difficult issue that must be addressed teachers and staff need to feel safe themselves which is exactly why we must support ways to reduce the problem behaviors in schools approaches just student wide pas a school wide positive behavior support can help establish a social culture in a positive environment that uses data driven decision making to foster appropriate behavior and improve academic achievement such practices have been shown to reduce office does to reduce office discipline referrals and problematic behavior children should not be abused in our classrooms under the guise of discipline or punishment this must stop now family should never be left wondering whether their child is safe in the care of their in their school and teachers should not feel compelled to use emergency interventions to manage behavior on a regular basis congress must step in and fill the void that has resulted in scars that many may never heal for those children and their families who have been the victims of this abuse i feel that the we're going to hear testimony about the improper use of seclusion and restraints in our nation's public schools all students but especially those with disabilities have the right to attend a school that is a safe and rich learning environment even in cases where students with disabilities have serious discipline problems and may be a threat to themselves it's important that teachers and classroom aids use interventions and supports that are both physically and emotionally safe for the child while it's important that special education and general education teachers have the tools and skills that they need to maintain an orderly learning environment protect themselves and their students in the classroom there should never be justification persecuting a student in a room without proper adult supervision or restraining a student that he or she cannot read this is child abuse plain and simple and has no role in our nation's schools with that said we do know that certain techniques can be used to restore order in the classroom and protect students without harm but it isn't black and white and the safety and well being of these children must always be of the highest priority once you reject the extreme procedures and techniques that we will hear about today there's a gray area schools must grapple with perhaps the greatest lesson from these tragic stories is the need greater training and understanding among teachers and classroom aides to prevent these stories from being repeated this is not a pleasant topic for any of us but especially for the parents who have lost so much thank you chairman miller and i yield back thank you i'd like now t introduce our panel of witnesses mr greg is a current managing director of the government accountability office forensic audits and special investigations unit since joining the unit one hundred ninety one he has investigated various high level  cases of fraud and abuse he recently provided congress with an objective high quality review of abuse and death of children in teen residential facilities mist and gatos is a mother of paige while enrolled in a special public school classroom in california then seven year old paige was restrained secluded repeatedly by her teacher page is now fifteen and is here with their mom today miss toni price of killeen texas will tell us about her fourteen year old foster son said cedric who who w will learn was a happy loving child tragically lost his life while being physically restrained by a special education teacher and i want to thank both of you for taking the time to come and share your stories with the committee i know it's not easy and i appreciate  your courage in doing so dr reef peterson is a professor of special education at the university of nebraska lincoln and his work spanning over three decades dr peterson has as conducted extensive national research on interventions for students with emotional and behavioral disorders student discipline in school school violence prevention he's also recently conducted research and policy analysis on the use of restraint seclusion procedures and school represented heritage you want to  only state university for her undergraduate work and the university of illinois springfield for graduate studies for the last three years is handsome and has served as assistant superintendent of special education and support services in this capacity she is responsible for the supervision of education for more than three hundred twenty thousand students with disabilities in the state of illinois under ms hanson insulators schip in school settings that maximize academic achievement of all students including those with emotional behavioral problems and other disabilities currently p b s has implemented in over one thousand schools in illinois and is handsome and is working with the department of education to expand to all of the what forty one hundred schools in the state and sounds of it thank you for appearing before the committee to highlight illinois success in preventing and reducing the use of restraint seclusion i look forward to hearing and then when your four minutes and your testimony in orange light will go up you think about wrapping up if you can we want you to complete your testimony in the way you're most most comfortable but we also as you can have a lot of members here we want to allow  for for questions but again we want you to do it the way you're most comfortable let me just add for that for the record that mary keeley assistant superintendent of people services in loudon county public schools was originally scheduled to testify today but will not attend the hearing a written statement will be included in the record welcome to the committee thank you for your work on this issue and we look forward to your testimony mr chairman and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss seclusion and restrain of children there are allegations of the abusive use of seclusion and restraint in public and private schools my testimony today addresses these allegations my testimony has two parts first i will provide you with a brief background and second i will discuss the results of our investigation first there are no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraint in public and private schools at the state level laws and regulations vary widely for example nineteen states have no roz or regulations that restrict the use of seclusion and restraint at the other end of the spectrum eight states specifically prohibit the use of restraint that restricts breathing although no national data is available for california and texas alone it was reported that there were thirty three thousand instances of seclusion restraint or other interventions during the two thousand and eight school year moving on to the results of our investigation we identified hundreds of allegations of the abusive use of seclusion and restraint in public and private schools at least twenty of these cases resulted in death most of the allegations related to children with disabilities some of the more troubling allegations that we identified include a three year old boy being strapped to a chair and secluded in a timeout room a five year old boy having his elbow fractured from a basket hold restraints a teenage boy repeatedly being locked in a four by six timeout room and then being forced to stay there after death of a thirteen year old boy hanging him selfe in a seclusion room with a cord the teachers provided to him to hold up his pants and a seventeen year old girl choking to death in her own vomit after being held in a face down restraint we took an in depth look at ten of these cases involving eighteen children between the ages of four and fifteen the purpose of our work was to validate the facts and circumstances for each of these cases this included interviewing numerous people along with reviewing police reports autopsies court records and other evidence the facts and circumstances we found for these cases were similar to those for the hundreds of allegations let me briefly describe three of these cases first the monitors show a picture of christina kilmer at the age of eight christina was born with cerebral palsy and later diagnosed with autism at the age of four her mother noticed that she was coming home from her preschool classes and west virginia with bruises on her arms chest and legs it turns out that she was being restrained in something that looked like an electric chair this chair had a high back and leather straps across the arms chest and legs the teacher had restrained her in this chair because she was being cooperative christina white her pants while being restrained in this chair according to her mother christina would act in an uncooperative way when she needed to use the restroom second the monitors show a picture of jonathan kerry at the age of thirteen with his father jonathan was intellectually disabled and autistic at the age of eleven a private school when new york secluded him in his room for extended periods of time he was also denied forty percent of his regular meals for behavioral problems his father removed him from this school after finding him lying naked in his own urine although hard to believe things got worse for jonathan was transferred to a state school for children with disabilities want a fieldtrip johnson became disruptive in the school van and was restrained by an aide jonathan died after this aide sat on top of him until he stopped breathing third the monitors show a picture of christopher smith at the age of eight christopher was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder when he was nine years old he was secluded seventy five times in the timeout room you see shown on both monitors although this room was unlocked a staff person would hold the door shut so that christopher could not leave you might wonder what this boy did to be secluded in this room seventy five different times i have in my hand copies of the seventy five logs that document these incidents the monitors show excerpts from these logs as you can see christopher was being punished for making noises waving his hands chewing on his shirt and fidgeting key themes from our ten cases include first as i mentioned most of these children had disabilities second prone or other restraints that restrict breathing can be deadly third staff were not properly trained and for those found responsible for the abusive use of seclusion or restraint continue to be licensed and work with children for example one teacher was found to  physically abused the boy by restraining him until he died this teacher was placed in the texas state registry of individuals that have abused and neglected children today she teaches at a public high school in northern virginia just a short drive from where we sit the conclusion there is no way to determine how widespread the abuse of use of seclusion and restraint is in our nation however many of the eighteen children from our case studies including for preschoolers were clearly abused and tortured this disturbing evidence makes this issue worthy of the attention of this committee and parents across the nation mr chairman this ends my statement and i look forward to your questions thank you very much and skaters welcome again to the committee thank you for being here can you hear me chairman mehta other distinguished members my name is on davis page i'm here today to discuss what happened to paige in the hope that no other child has to suffer as she did from infancy page with an intense and for racist law she was an early read it and could identify any state in the us before she was two she developed a strong interest in astronomy and geology in early two thousand and one page eighty seven was tentatively diagnosed with bipolar disorder diagnosis and discarded and asperger's syndrome we were devastated but she would receive an appropriate education we were such the options and paid started school that much in a mixed grade class from kindergarten through third grade at no time was the use of to stop wiggling a loose tooth when in time out she claimed she could not of course bruce we were shocked that we had not known of this use of force and that such force could be used for something so trivial paige was also restrained for refusing to complete work in june my husband to one that was much more therapeutic and humane while attending summer school in july of two thousand and two with the same teacher i was called to fetch page as we were driving home page burst into tears and told me mommy she had a severe school and she had fled the school grounds she was returned to the school safely but the situation continued to escalate for several hours until the teacher took her into an empty classroom there she grabbed pages in her left hand up between pages shoulder blades just left ankle in her right hand lifted her up of the ground and drove her headfirst into the ground no documentation of any of these incidents was ever filed that's an appointment the next day page's neuropsychologist reported the incident to child protective services or c p s c p s has no jurisdiction of a public school teachers and referred the matter to the police but the case was not ultimately prosecuted then complained to the administration and wrote to the school board only one board member ever this little boy then six years old was kept in seclusion timeout for the entire school day six hours nineteen successive school days he was denied food water access and education during this entire time he too came home with unexplained injuries and his mother had also complained to the district c p s and the police about these incidents we were horrified and again wrote to the school board on receiving no response to our repeated complaints we filed a lawsuit through which we learnt of many tale ending but the teacher was something returned to the same classroom after hurting page shortly thereafter c p s was again called after she threatened with a pair of scissors she finally left that school however she went to work for another school district in and when she first started it these events obscured an accurate diagnosis and delayed the opportunity to get the appropriate services and supported support for paige i love my daughter with all my heart and i believe she will achieve great things with her life but i am enormously saddened by the tremendous loss of innocence trust and potential that she has suffered i hope you can help children like her again thank you for the opportunity to testify today and i will answer any questions you may have thank you if he was very jovial and truly loving he lied to by go bowling and feed the ducks in the pond near our home when he had extra energy he loved to run to the end of the driveway and he got along well with the other children in they were never physical and he was never aggressive we were able to find solutions to his behavior that were once he stole a bag of chips from the kitchen i made him pay me back and it worked because he learned his lesson about dealing but but she never received a criminal record or any kind of sentence she was placed on the texas register for being abusive to children i have been told that this teacher now teaches a public high school in north northern virginia her virginia license sold her be kindergarten through twelve special education if that teacher was just doing her job there's something very wrong with this if they if i had treated that way i'd be in jail i want to my name is repeated my role is that a researcher who will on with other colleagues from around the country are attempting to understand the use of restraints and seclusion in school settings i've been a researcher in teacher ed cater for more than thirty years my purpose is to share with you what we know or maybe more accurately what we don't know about the use of restraint and seclusion in school settings there is virtually no research about the number of situations which occur in schools where student behavior poses danger of physical injury to themselves or to other students or to staff similarly there is no information about how these situations are addressed whether physical restraint is used where an adult physically holds a student prevents them from moving or whether seclusion is use our procedures are used where a student is placed in a special environment and prevented from leaving by them when they're alone i believe that there is agreement among knowledgeable professional educators that physical restraint and seclusion procedures should be used only rarely in school setting and then to prevent injuries only when there is immediate danger of physical injury to someone and about is an emergency situation while some of suggested that both restraint and seclusion can be used to change student behavior there is virtually no evidence to support the effectiveness for that purpose seclusion should be distinguished here from time out from positive reinforcement which does have evidence of potential value in changing behavior but which need not entail seclusion there is controversy regarding whether these procedures should also be employed when students may be causing serious damage to the school environment most would say that those should not be used those procedures should not be used in such situations because of the risks for injury from those procedures may be larger than the risks without such strategies nevertheless there are some isolated studies and anecdotal evidence that these procedures are being used for a variety of other situations that are not emergencies and one study my colleagues and i found the use of these procedures occurred for student noncompliance leaving the learning environment and other student behaviors similar to what we've heard here today that did not apparently entail danger of physical injury to anyone similar instances of non emergency use have occurred  many of the numerous news media reports that we've all seen according to anecdotal reports these procedures have also been implemented in appropriately in other respects restraints have been conducted by people not trained to do so without recognition of the physiological symptoms of distress such as restricted breathing or were conducted well past the time when the student has regained control seclusion has been employed environments which are not safe without close monitoring of the student and for extended or inappropriate length of time all of these situations defy commonly accepted professional guidelines for the use of these procedures since reports of these since these reports are often the result of parent complaints  media reports we do not know how many times these procedures are in appropriately employed with students yet there does appear to be a substantial number of these situations and they appear to be scattered across the united states however we must also acknowledge that there may also be many situations across the united states where these procedures are being used much more appropriately and there may be little or no adverse effects because of their use in those situations where there are true emergencies states a very substantially in their supervision of these procedures in the schools has been alluded to earlier in a recent study and that my colleagues and i engaged in we found that there were twenty one states which had policies regarding restraint ten more with guidelines or technical assistance documents in fourteen states reported no policies or guidelines at all in that case for seclusion there was about seventeen states which had policies and seven more with guidelines we could identify and as you can imagine these are changing continually most of the time both types of policies and guidelines were included in special education policies for these states but all of these policies varied widely in their terminology definitions and content it is important to note that the use of these procedures is not strictly an issue related to students with disabilities while most of the instances of their use procedures  have been with disability students with disabilities some have not school staff members who engage in restraints or seclusion may not be in special education staff we currently don't know there is concern about knowledge from knowledgeable professionals regarding the deaths and injuries resulting from these procedures concern that reasonable guidelines for the use are apparently not being followed and concern for violations of human rights there are several recommendations that could be made having to do with some things already addressed such as prevention and the creation of positive supports adequate staffing of school programs appropriate and specific training developing a common framework as to when these procedures could and should be used and more consistent emergency and safety planning with parents regarding those students who we can predict might have serious behavioral episodes and then common d v briefing and reporting to some outside agency the state department of education or other agencies i think would be helpful there is a more comprehensive set of recommendations which is currently being developed by the council for children with behavioral disorders which is a division of the council for exceptional children and those reports addressed many of these issues and are available and i would like to see some of those kinds of recommendations be implemented to address these very serious problems that we about thank you very much thank you tha you good morning mr chairman and members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this important topic today in two thousand and one illinois enacted legislation to specifically address the issues of seclusion known as isolated timeout no annoyed and physical restraint in public schools the state board of education in collaboration with stakeholders around the state developed rules governing the use of isolated timeout and physical restraint we relied upon information from research and evidence based practices and our rules became affective in january of two thousand and two these rules apply to all students in illinois not only those with disabilities they limit the employment of isolated timeout and physical restraint to be used only to preserve the safety of self or others and to prohibit the use of seclusion or restraint for the purpose of punishment or exclusion illinois rules and impose time limits require continual visual monitoring of and communication with the student can only be used when the student poses a physical risk to self or others there is no medical contra indication to accuse in staff applying of restraint have been trained in  safe application in accordance with the rules within the past two years further restrictions include prohibiting the use of chemical or mechanical restraints and requiring that students who communicate via sign language or with augmentative devices be allowed have their hands free of restraint the need for seclusion and restraint is in part the result of insufficient knowledge skills and systems of prevention and behavior for the majority of behaviors which result in the use of seclu restraint can be prevented by early identification and intensive intervention implemented within a school system of behavioral support for the past ten years the state board of education in illinois has invested in the implementation of school positive and behavior intervention supports t b i s as a systems approach to establishing the social culture needed for schools to achieve social and academic gains w minimizing problem behaviors for all students to the implementation of p b s is a recognition that we must teach and acknowledge behavioral and social skills just as we teach academic skills school wide positive behavior interventions and supports emphasizes the implementation of evidence based practices school district and state systems that support the implementation of these practices and ongoing collection of data for decision making purposes doctors robert corner and george of the national p b s center these elements are operationalized by five guiding principles first invest in prevention to establish a foundation intervention that is in peer cli validated to be effective and sustainable teach and acknowledge appropriate behavior before relying on negative consequences use regular universal screening to identify students who need more intense support and provide that support as early as possible and with the intensity needed to meet the needs didn't establish a continuum of behavioral and academic interventions for use when students are identified as needing more intensive and finally use progress monitoring to assess a the fidelity with which the support is provided and be the impact of that support on student academic and social outcomes juvenile corrections data collection of these past ten years show significant reductions in office disciplinary referrals suspensions and expulsions resulting in increased time for academic instruction in learning schools that implement p b s with but ality show improved academic outcomes as measured by our state assessments illinois schools implementing p b s show greater capacity to support students with the most complex needs these schools have a reduction in the number of instances which require intensive interventions including seclusion and restraint and increased effectiveness of individual behavior support in illinois data shows that school  can have a positive impact in all programs including reduction in the use of restraints in separate facilities for students with emotional disorders by more than fifty percent in the first year of implementing the program reduction in the occurrence of critical instance by more than sixty percent following implementation and youth correctional center based on our experience in illinois we urge the adoption of the national voluntary standards and model policies on the use of seclusion and restraint this can only be effective when coupled with a strong commitment and investment in the training and ongoing support of staff in the use of evidence  bench and strategies as supported by the positive behavior for effective schools act thank you for your support and attention to this important topic thank you very much and thank you to all of you for your with this system that that's currently in place and we hope that we'll be able to demonstrate to you that we can we can change that and paige thank you very much for for being here with us this morning face and if you just take that texas and california and says we don't know anything about them we only know the number apparently but there would appear that when you have a protocol in place of illinois trying to put in place and has a place a number schools that there keep rising as we speak from what comes in but certainly we know there's hundreds and given that just those two states at thirty three thousand instances not improper it's likely it's a bigger number it sounds and i don't know what you had in place before this in terms of and that this is a reoccurring problem with the use of this of this restraint in some cases it's argue that there's training that takes place but again from your report it's hard to to determine whether or not that training is adequate in terms of the protection for the safety of the children yes that's correct i mean the face down restraint or the prime restraint was responsible for at least three of the four deaths here and possibly the fourth there are  fourth child was face down when they were sat on a school van and you may recall from our work our residential programs for troubled youth there were many deaths there that were there were result of prowling or face down restraint so it's certainly where you block the breeding even if you're sitting up probably anything that blocks or restricts the breathing is at high risk and that's i think pretty well i would think that that would mean that the cumulative evidence that we have you would suggest that perhaps that's not a restraint that you want to continue to use on young children given what we learned in the residential facilities what we're now seeing in schools this is this is a high risk restraint especially in the hands of people who aren't have any awareness or training i don't want to give train that's a green light for this but even with the training this is a very high risk restraint it would seem to be the highest risk restraint from what we can see you know it's just hard it's very hard to figure out how you use this and what is happening to this child most of whom are fifteen and younger but a number of them were  y under under eleven years old you know we've been discussing a lot and listening to waterboarding about waterboarding where you drip water over a cough on a person's or upside down i guess and you create the perception that they're drowning and you start to think of here you're you're you're losing your breath you're losing your ability to breathe mispriced talked about cedric trying to tell people that couldn't read so you're creating that same that same psychological impact on that child that they're going to suffocate and in fact in some cases they were suffocated they died and even if you quote use it successfully the fear the humiliation that you've that that child has experienced it to me is almost uncomprehensible that we would think that this is some kind of proper therapy to use on very young children you don't need to respond to i just taken by your report that this would be so readily turn to and again documented in the g a o report that in many instances this wasn't about a child being a danger to themselves or to others this was about trying to restore order or the teacher didn't like the behavioral or whatever the interaction was the child's life ended up being threatened but the child wasn't threatening anybody else's life or themselves of prior to that and i just think when you when you think about the age appropriateness of the seclusion seventy five times locked away in a dark room people locked away dark rooms for hours reading themselves deaf of any understanding of how sensitive young children are about their peers and themselves and back and forth i mean this punishment is way way out of we have this sort of patchwork of state regulation where states have taken a look at this in interest and it appears that the states that take a look at this realize not only the jeopardy that they are in but the jeopardy that they're putting children in and they've tried to one way or another have some some system to try to check this but i think if they would just pause for a moment and think about what they're what they're doing if you look at the g a o report  of from the age of eleven through thirteen was was was was was was being abused a male fifteen female four years old four males under the age of six a male eight years old five students ages six and seven a female seven years old a male nine years old these are very young children yet four of our eighteen were actually four years old so they're very they were know this is you know this this is just unacceptable it's just unacceptable that that this would be a policy within a public institution with respect to the care  of these children everyone on this committee is fully appreciates the difficulty that teachers engage in and a daily basis of trying to teach and and and and create an atmosphere for learning in a classroom with the with the various mix of children that we have and we have processes and we have protections in place clearly insufficient protections within the school but none of that justifies this kind of behavior and i have to tell you i've got to believe that in many instances these teachers are victimized almost as much because the fact that they don't have the kinds of resources necessary to deal with this either they need additional they need additional training just in how they react and respond to students but when when they get into an incident where requires something beyond that it seems to me they're kind of left they may be necessary in these emergency situations to prevent injury and it's a simple matter of teachers obligation to defend the other kids in the class and even the target student from their own behavior as well as themselves my concern would be i don't think the g a o report suggests that this is only done in emergency situations and that is a huge gap between and i think we need to find a way to correct these abusive situations but to also provide the support you mention to teachers who are really struggling to do the right thing for kids mr mccann thank you mr chairman these kinds of hearings are very hard schools and apparently nothing can be done there either what i'm wondering is what do what good will more laws be if if there's no way to enforce the law or in your case ms price where  and when you rule a homicide and yet nothing seems to happen the teachers are still working because labor laws that protect people to the t extreme levels labor the labor unions that protect people from extreme situations what is it that causes these kind of problems and the people seemed their lives go on unaffected years i think we got it signed into law by him the f b i records could be shared in the case of child abuse in schools teacher that was i think they were had to be convicted  of child abuse but they went on a registry the f b i records could be shared from state to state or school district school district which i think is very important however that was a conviction what you're talking about is a claim or in the case of your foster child the death was ruled a homicide but there was no action taken so there wouldn't be any conviction on any person's records so if you go to another state you wouldn't you would even have to lie on your application there's not a place on that problem is when you employ someone you can't even ask them how old they are you can the has come about so many things that would that would then that would help give somebody a clue as to what's going on i  understand the registry you're talking about it just seems to me that these cases are so extreme and yet nothing can be done and we're talking about maybe passing more laws and i think like the states have laws where these abuses happened and nothing happened so i guess i don't know what good another law would do i understand the importance of training the teachers or administrators who may be well we don't know whether she was safe or whether they didn't check out is a texas registry a public record she was initially place in the texas registry then all of a sudden it disappeared from the texas registry so we're not sure if virginia checked or not or if texas dropped the ball but we do know that the school district this case loudoun county public schools here in northern virginia was not aware that this teacher had this prior situation but we don't know whether again whether anybody checked we don't there's i think that's been referred the case to the virginia department of education on friday ok they're aware of it they're investigating it and ultimately the committee will probably be informed what happened something broke down in the system clear right clearly clearly something broke down the system well i don't know i don't know if there is a system for that no no but if the texas registry was was a public record the question would be would you check with the person was last employed to see if there was anything on the public record that's on so i don't know that there's a system in place to do that  into that at this point i certainly think that this is worthy of a look at the federal level but i believe go to innocence have much more knowledge in that area than i do but very often when we want to we spend federal dollars for a program we feel is good for children we put some standards in that program for the expenditure of those daughters as raising we can do here is you a federal role that we should have to try to make sure these things don't happen that we've heard have happened what should the federal role be or is your i would think there should be a role where we are spending dollars hopefully to help kids to make sure they are not hurt i don't know one example we talked about is this some sort of a registry people can go to to determine this teacher who was involved with cedric step was found by administrative law judge to have been guilty of you know at least abuse of children and there was a registry set up but we don't know if it's just that some states do that or whatever it's something national on that or worse there would be some ability to tap into that to do checks on people would be useful for example there's i'm sure there's other things you can consider but that's something that we came across that i'm sure parents would be concerned about if we do we really know who the teachers are that are teaching our children our country dr peters and you haven't responded to that yes i think the registry may be of value that would be good but i think the larger issue is the response of schools and i do think there would be value to some common definitions terminology common expectations across the states for when these procedures could or should be used if at all and that would help a lot whether it's a law or some kind of federal guidelines that would direct states or help states implement better policies i think would be very helpful and i think we have to remember that we have many more kids in school with serious mental health issues serious behavioral issues than we had ten or twenty years ago and as a result we also need to provide better supports and i think the preventive things that were mentioned could be built in by requiring districts to have to show their preventive efforts their plans for how they are implementing positive behavioral supports rather  than just relying on some of these issues so i do think there are some things like that that could be done at the federal level that would really assist states to become more uniform and move practice further ahead of all of you could reflect more upon  because you know while she was up there are like myself i'm the father of three children the grandfather of seven children and i can just imagine to a bigger picture forward i'm just curious what their experience was and whether they found found this to be a successful approach or not you know these are terrible events and i my heart goes out to the parents  here the question is not how can we punish schools but how can we prevent these things forever happening in the first place and i think can be useful to know if there are other situations that are quite similar such as when i mention  or there may be others that we can learn from and find out what works and what doesn't work in those situations where we've already tried to address a problem do you have any comment on that  anyone wish to comment well i think the sampson issue was one that was valuable i'm not clear with the specifics but i think that there would be some value in doing something like that in the schools understanding that schools were not eligible for that competition and that initiative but i think there would be value in doing that do you know anyone on the panel know whether there are other programs that might be similar to that we could look at and then compare and see what's effective and what isn't i'm not immediately aware i know there are some individual situations where individuals have taken the leadership within  district to try to reduce the use of these procedures so i think they could be found they are there are some good examples out there and we need to identify and maybe share the wisdom that they've learned with and i'm actually but also some sort of register mr chairman magister that would be a good thing for the staff to look at i'm just not feeling a little antsy here as to how to begin addressing this and i'm just look for very important hearing and it's actually shocking to hear what has happened in these ten cases i my first career for the first ten to twelve years or so i was a public school teacher and i taught in new york and say public school systems in new jersey and although i was primarily in secondary school i did have a student were a bit in an elementary school for several years but i i just cannot fathom how abuse like this could happen it seems like rather than things and proving because we always heard that time would take care of everything things will get better in time however this seems to be going in in an opposite direction and we hear stories that you know we didn't hear about it years ago and i'm being in the system there weren't investigations however being in a school we would know and that's basically perhaps a question to both of the parents ms mr price did you find any of the other teachers or school personnel or minister it was there anyone that just said you know i really would like to tell you this person's abusive or or maybe you want to report so i mean it's just it is worse than the police silence of the blue you know this is silence of the of the educators i what has been terribly she held to meetings to discuss the abuse she was docked of her pay for the time spent in the first after the second she was put in it on administrative leave and she would be fired if you spoke to parents in deposition and h r manager said the things she was most upset about with this was that she warned parents this woman was trashed to us her credibility was trashed by the principal this woman was the bravest their perceptions she came to the conclusion she came to completely with those of our expert witnesses she was head and shoulders above everybody else from that district and i thought she was treated as a strong code of silence on the district is going to protect itself we feel very strongly that uniformed complaints to the district should not be investigated by the prime culprit the fox guarding the hen house the assistant superintendent would have investigated a uniform complaint  ever got about this was a very unpleasant call from him trying to undercut our credibility basically trying to intimidate us and they can do that because they have enormous amounts of public money to pay for their legal defense they can generally outspend and exhaust the plaintiffs so they're not going to be much help i agree with tony about the importance of a central repository of information and one possibility would be to give child protective services or equivalent extinction of a teaches so that they could keep some sort of central records if if i had three complaints against me by three different people including two professionals one of whom was in the classroom and witnessed before the time expires mr coote what was your reaction when you when you are people went around to ask the questions where you welcome the boys a bad deal well maybe let's try to work o correcting anything if it's wrong or was it sort of the same kind of the fences at cetera et cetera well certainly the parents and attorneys and law enforcement were willing to cooperate we got autopsy reports court records  etc we did not attempt to speak to the teachers i think that was something that we felt was necessary but we had sworn statements from pretty much all of them so we knew what their positions where we don't want to have federal agents show up for some people who had been found guilty of anything and then you know ra questions about those folks but overall the cooperation the schools i think they weren't really interested in telling us too much but they were hoping to move beyond the incidents that occur because they were pretty egregious incidents hyperactivity disorder and a substitute teacher restrained the child in a chair with masking tape and also taped his mouth shut because the boy would not remain seated and actually  lawsuit was brought and he was the substitute was found guilty of the restraint and aggravated aggravated battery and sentenced to two years probation community service and a psychological evaluation however it also says that the substitute still possesses and illinois is substitute teaching certificate which expires in june of two thousand and nine that seems like that would probably have been the first thing that the state would have asked is to take away that education are you aware of that case i was not aware of the case until this report and i have not had an opportunity to investigate that but i certainly is something that i will be following up with our department individuals with in illinois forced teacher certification there are certain enumerated offenses that are automatic revocation of their certificate i will have to revert to review this to determine whether or not this case will warrant that type of action or not but at this time i could not comment ok well i understand you're one of the illinois one of the first states in the country to enact legislation governing the use of seclusion and restraint does it  states require parental consent before using restraints on children with disabilities for example if a child with a disability has gone through the process which they would have gone through the behavior intervention plan would indicate what types of techniques will be utilized in the focus would be on those positive interventions or supports that we provided in the restraints in the issues would come as more severe once you've tried those other issues you about it and how many states come and how many of them really are using this program as well as you know illinois has really been recognized for our data on positive behavior interventions and supports we've been asked to speak at many national conferences and regional conferences with regards to the success our schools have had the implementation in the the expanse of the program to a quarter of our schools just in the short period of time i know a thousand schools over ten years is good for us and we have made huge strides with regards to the coaching in the training and support that we provide to our teachers so we are providing technical assistance and information to other states where do you think the allah schools our school district should be in this program or is this something that should be a choice there because there are other programs aren't there certainly one of the activities that we are working on in illinois is to align all of our discretionary projects for all students so that we can ensure success for our students post secondary ensure safe healthy learning environments ensure that we have the most highly qualified and trained teacher staff those are the three goals of our agency in order to do that one of the activities we're working with is with the scaling up initiative th school scaling up of all of our evidence based practices and our reading first model the two models for which we were all of our discretionary projects all of our technical assistance for both general ed and special education to ensure that the individual who was responsible for this had her name placed in the texas central registry a listing of individuals found of abuse and neglect to children that's correct mr coote that this person's because of this homicidal conduct is that correct she was supposed to have gone on the registry but at some point came off the registry and we don't know when but i think i've also read this correctly that your conclusion was that there's no a link between her teaching certificate expiring and her entry on to this registry in several these cases that's correct there's no cause and effect here necessarily so problem number one is to access the texas state government has actual knowledge that a person's involved in a homicide such that they put them on this registry but don't take affirmative action to revoke their teaching certificate so the next thing that happens is that at some point this individual comes to northern virginia and i have a letter that i guess you wrote may fourteenth to the assistant superintendent of the commonwealth of virginia department of education putting that department on notice that this individual discovered is now teaching in the loudoun county public schools is that correct that's correct and then what happened is we have a letter dated today written to chairman miller and mr mckay and in which it explains that one of the witnesses who was going to testify evidently employed by that same system felt inappropriate to comment on the case without knowing all the facts which i completely understand that letter from mary from the american association of school administrators reports that the individual in question here was immediately placed on administrative leave pending district had knowledge of this individual's background is that correct we don't know conclusively but we believe they did not ok now is that if your assumption is true that another problem becomes pretty obvious here is that there was no interstate reporting of what happened in texas what happened virginia so someone can sort of i realize that her name disappeared from the texas registry which is an interesting question so i guess that's a third problem  terribly well kept second thing that happens is that there is no suggestion that there is a cause and effect between the expiration of this person's teaching certificate and their presence on the registry within taxes  third problem is that we're assuming although we do not yet know that the first time any education authority in virginia knew that one of their teaching employees had been involved in texas was when you notified and texas and california texas and anywhere secondly the state that was responsible for maintaining this registry i'd like to hear the explanation as to why this individual evaporated from the registry i hope you're going to be enough to do something about this but beyond that i think a lot of these cases don't get reported very hard to think of a person less powerful than the american legal and political  voiceless testimony was very powerful respect to both you and miss pryse are obviously very articulate intelligent forceful women but what i'm hearing is that your concerns were kind of blown off by school officials because you were some annoying parent well that's there's something wrong with that and i appreciate the testimony mr coach we especially appreciate your tenacity continue because i think we want to find out what really happened not just for the sake of cedric and i in my second month in office had the opportunity to go to a school in my district that had p b s and the principal took me around i was incredibly impressed with the way the program was working and how the kids liked it and you know we were talking afterwards and the principal said something to me and i think that's kind of what we're hearing today too it's you know it's not easy to be punitive but we're talking about the punitive you know let's t congress the positive behavior for effective schools act and you know we're going to be hopefully moving on that but it just seems to me that you can be punitive and pager with with press with your son or you could do something utilize their data and drive the decision based on we manage our behavior within the school positively interacting with the students so that they have more instructional time we have seen huge increases in the academic outcomes it's difficult to get a special ed teacher it's easy to get rid of people who complain frankly i don't completely understand their total lack of response it seems to me quite frankly that they would much rather they let me let me respond to that if that is an attitude that people have about foster children that is the most shameful attitude i think a person can have these are these are god's children we're talking about it doesn't matter and that would be that would be a tremendous disrespect for for these for these wonderful young kids because i just want to know are you going to and i would share with mr andrews is there anybody checking into this texas thing on how this person got out the list are you going to look into that or some of looking into that so they get back to the committee because i genuinely i know concerns a lot of us are probably all of us here is how this person's name mysteriously disappeared from the register will try to get the bomb and let the committee now thank you thank you so much thank you mr chairman you know we as a nation went through a long struggle in terms of dealing with child abuse within families and got to a point where now  incidents are reported to health care providers or psychologists now the law requires those individuals to report them to child protection agencies i am astonished at  agency that's deferring to other arms of government what's the legal explanation for why she ran into that sort of barrier i don't know all that and some states had a requirement that parents would be notified in advance of other  states are required there's a requirement to tell parents after it happened other states there's no requirements at all so it's all over the board i don't remember that particular state what the requirements were against child abuse and child abuse whether it happens in a home whether it happens whatsoever again it just takes my breath away because i mean a lot of police departments frankly are not equipped to handle this type of investigation they defer to child protection agencies because they have disciplinary teams that know how to was kind of we had a special education and it was a very open ended case so you were pretty pretty much on your own in terms of your own sort of financial resources having to underwrite there were many parents before us too would have liked to file a lawsuit but didn't have the resources financially or in terms of time and as you fighting the lawsuit which is very stressful at the same time we're trying to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess these people have made of children and the district suggested nothing and offered us no help with that looking at your case studies again it just seemed there was tremendous variation in terms of what the response was i mean it was one case where someone actually went to prison on a manslaughter conviction actually two people went to prison that case the driver of the van and the individual but suffocated so at some level i mean the criminal courts are brought in in the most extreme circumstances i think it was it was not consistent i mean you had ten cases here i guess there were four where the individuals platter were found guilty and included five and it ended in one case two individuals were present but the other convictions were really just probation threat to someone's safety is there any evidence that it serves any useful purpose i can't answer that but what i can say is in many or most of our cases there was no threat to individuals  themselves or other people as i mentioned four of our eighteen children were four years old they weighed probably forty pounds or so so i can't imagine what kind of threat they would have posed to anybody mr peters dr peterson is there any useful purpose to the restraints if there is no imminent threat to someone saying no there is no research evidence to support that is a research evidence to suggest that there are other strategies that do have a purpose yes i think so many situations in iowa within a close proximity a few years ago where a youngster was who died as a result of prone restraint in one school but then within a month or two and the parents sued i don't know the outcome b within a month or so another school did not restrain a youngster who then ran out fell into a river and drowned and in this case the school was sued for not restraining so it is a delicate balance to try to find the right response to specific specific situations and behavior and i think it comes back to training schools feel responsible for the kids that they serve and tried to protect those kids as generally lumped together and that's one of the things that i think is needed is a clear definition of restraint or we don't want the situation where teachers can't touch kids at all  some yet would consider any touching to be inappropriate whatsoever so there is room there to define that do you know the outcome of the various lawsuits that have been filed in cases there's at least nine of these cases where there were civil suits and there were settlements in most of those cases of that much on the criminal side how much of a settlement financial settlements anywhere from seventy five thousand to about one point three million or more enough to get put in there the word voluntary why should national standards in training be voluntary rather than mandatory with regards to the voluntary standards are we already have standards in illinois if you're looking at haven't studied it but i think i would support that concept that was mentioned for minimum standards and process also training to go along with those standards yes thank you mr chairman and i appreciate this hearing i'm sorry to say that as i was listening to the testimony it threw me back to the seventy's when we had a horrible situation going through this country on our young children and in mental institutions that covered just basically almost every sort of problem special needs of a child will of war comes to my mind and an in depth study of children being chained to the walls make it not being fed we closed all those mental hospitals because we found from the studies that it was  better for the young people to try and stay in the home setting and opened up our schools so they could be more inclusive with that comes obviously a lot more work but to hear the testimony and see that's still going on is in my opinion criminal one of the other things too and i know it might not even fit into this mr chairman but we still in our schools thirteen schools to be exact in this country  for punishment by paddling and boarding we know that any kind of violence to a child only begets more violence and even thinking back to my nursing days in the seventy's and eighty's where they all restrained patients and patients died because they were restrained and we here in the same situation here with our children we have found that we do not have to restate strain our patients ni percent of the time because it is retraining sometimes that causes more staff i did a lot of private duty in my life and i would take care of a patient in the family would harm me mainly because they didn't want to see their loved ones restrained i didn't have to restrain my patients at all it was more of a matter of sitting there calmly holding someone's hand and trying to get them an agitated and that's basically the training that needs to be done you know special needs schools mr chairman i don't know where we're going to go on this but obviously we have an awful lot to do and one of the things that are you directing that to me i personally do not believe that we should be continuing to use those practices in schools and i think we have alternatives but this has been a controversial area and i would like to see those practices eliminated i hope that we as we start dealing with education and whatever new leave behind bill is going to be i'm hoping that we can put safety issues in there so we don't have parents here  in this kind of testimony because i have to tell you i mean what was said with my colleagues for one child to die is one child too much but the emotional school scars on to children are the reason we put children out into settings of schools is because they have a better opportunity to learn as much as possible but training obviously has to be a big part of that teachers that are in these classes and w see that we're going to have more and more children especially those diagnosed with autism putting on what level they are our schools now you know i know a couple of schools in my district have whole classrooms now of children with autism and if we won't learn how to deal with these issues now unfortunately we're going to probably see a lot more injured children and that's wrong how do we figure out how to put a federal guidelines on to this i would suggest training is going to be a very very big part of it but also the idea of somehow some kind of data that follows these teachers  that should be a federal law are as far as i'm concerned that if any teacher harms a child they should definitely lose their license  thank you mr chairman and thank you for this hearing this is the twenty first century we live in the united states of america why is it that our children continue to be abused there more than abuse their murdered and their tortured now we're talking about torture in a lot of ways around this country right now this is torture for these children do we need an anti tortured legislation for our schools or do we need a commitment a commitment to the future of our nation and that means a commitment to all every single child in the united states of america really worldwide i'm so frustrated by this and i'll be working with you on any way we can make this better but i was wondering what the training thank you very much for your for your testimony clearly the facts that have come to light today startled the members of this committee as i assume they will start of the public as they become aware of this this behavior does in some instances look like torture of young children certainly the abuse of these children  know the policy considerations of how that continues you know if you put a child into seclusion seventy five times you might want to think that it's not working and you might want to think about what else you should be doing or how should you deal with  and what point would you tell the parents bring them in to this we have a process for children with disabilities the process where parents and others are brought into to work out a plan for the for having that child in school so the child can benefit of the so the other students can continue to have opportunities to learn and we can we can in fact educate the greatest number of our of our children but so much of this is inconsistent with the intent and purpose of th law and we see this in the significant number of these cases the engulfed children with with disabilities i think we have to recheck those circuits also on whether or not that is in fact working again when you go through the state the various state regulations and some of the some of them have consent some of them don't have consent some of them it's clear that it's written consent some of them have training and some of them have training but it's not it's not regular training it's not it's not it's not systematic and so what we really have is is a system the that is failing to protect our school children and certainly failed to protect so many of those children who bring to school their disabilities but we have made a decision as a nation that those children are entitled to go to school they're entitled to receive that that education and we're better for that as are those children and so many of them have been able to participate in a much wider range of activities both in point and in general in general society as a result of that decision that we made a s a nation but this treatment of many of those children stand that decision on its head because clearly we're not providing the kinds of protections that members of committee have asked what where we go and what are we going to do we will sit down with the members of the committee we have some additional work i think for all we want to be on on on solid ground here we want the cooperation of the states but it's clear that the current situation  unacceptable and cannot cannot continue in the manner in which it has so i want to thank you very much for your testimony and i want to thank you and your fellow workers for for for their investigation for the happened to your to your children and to your families and page thank you very much for being here very helpful to us too to meet you and i'm looking forward to see what your sketch i hope if you're of illinois for leading the way this can you can develop an alternative policy that can save children's lives and certainly stop the abuse of these children on all two regular regular basis