Kansas schools reported over 11,000 emergency interventions last school year

Kansas State Board of Education member Jim Porter called for the reestablishment of a work group to find best practices for children experiencing acute behavioral episodes during school.

Emergency safety intervention is the seclusion or restraint of a student when educators believe is an immediate threat of danger or harm to themselves or others. Data collected during the prior school year showed there were 11,765 incidents of seclusion in Kansas schools, and on average they last about six minutes. It’s more often used on younger students, with the average age being 8.

Though incidents are quite common, how school districts respond to them can vary. State regulations require that school districts have emergency safety intervention plans but don’t require specific measures.

“We need to do a better job at communicating best practices,” Porter said. “It is the local school district that makes those determinations.”

The Kansas Legislature passed standards for the use of interventions in 2013 that restricts forceful restraint of students, bars use on students with medical conditions that could escalate the situation and disallowed interventions as a form of punishment.

Why ESI standards were put in place

Prior to the 2013 regulations, school practices could be harmful to students. Tonia Wade said her disabled daughter’s intervention put her into a small dark room that has caused her trauma that still manifests years later.

“Kalia was forced against her will into a scary and tiny box that the school was using as a so-called seclusion room. It wasn't a room. It was a small makeshift box built out of material you can buy at your local hardware store,” said Tonia Wade.

Each individual testifying before the board said the best emergency safety intervention is no emergency safety intervention.

“When you get to ESI, that's the end of the road, that things have gone horribly wrong. And we would definitely like to intervene and help you move things back,” said Linda Wilkerson, director of the Kansas Technical Assistance System Network.

Prevention is best

Expert testimony said improving classroom climate and relationships between students and teachers is the most effective way to avoid interventions with students. That may be as simple as a teacher saying hello to a student and using their names every morning to more individualized learning environments for students who have issues in classroom settings.

“Maybe we need to have some specific targeted interventions where they're in there looking at the curriculum while the teacher is teaching, but then they take a pause and they go and they work on it intensively with a smaller group, maybe in the back of the room, maybe in a different room, because they've got distraction issues,” said Lee Stickel, who works on the autism and tertiary behavior supports project for the Technical Assistance System Network.

Why the issue is being revisited

Porter said the issue is important for the board as they’re losing several board members that were present when the state board made recommendations. He said there’s nothing in the regulations that require or suggest what are considered less-than ideal practices, like the removal of all students from the classroom.

“Since it's been so long, since we've dealt with this, that we need to reevaluate our processes,” Porter said.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas schools reported over 11,000 emergency interventions last school year