Discipline in schools infringes on NJ disability rights, says mom. Why it still happens

Kelly Graziano's son was 7 when he suffered what he still calls the worst day of his young life.

The trouble started on May 4 last year when the first grader, who has a learning disability and struggles with anxiety, began arguing with his teacher at Martha B. Day School in Bloomingdale over which side of a paper to color.

It ended an hour and 20 minutes later with the boy in a frenzy, shouting as three adults tried to contain him behind rubber mats. Graziano said her son is still scared and confused by the ordeal, more than a year later.

Such tactics remain in use in New Jersey schools despite warnings by experts that they're traumatizing and counterproductive — and despite efforts by state and federal education officials to root them out of the classroom.

In a first-of-its kind survey this past spring, Garden State schools reported about 2,500 incidents in the 2022-2023 school year in which students were physically restrained or shut away in rooms by themselves to deal with difficult behavior.

What are restraint and seclusion?

Educators say restraint a n d seclusion are used on rare occasions to stop students from hurting themselves or others. But critics say the methods are both harmful and ineffective. Statistics also show the interventions are used disproportionately on children of color and those with disabilities.

"We don't view restraint or seclusion as anything but abusive practices, quite frankly,” said Peg Kinsell, policy director at the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network , a disability group based in Newark. “Restraint and seclusion should be outlawed in all public schools. And it's clear that the danger of physical injury, trauma or emotional distress is evident in any student that it is practiced on."

Graziano said she has never gotten an adequate explanation from school officials about why extreme tactics were necessary for her son. She has become a public critic at Bloomingdale school board meetings of what she considers the district's abuse of students with disabilities .

Data released by the state this year show that Bloomingdale schools restrained or secluded students 27 times over the 2022-2023 school year, though officials with the Passaic County district say the number was inflated by a misunderstanding of the new reporting requirements.

"My son was secluded one time last year, and at no point did anyone tell us that they used mats and things like that. We were stunned," Graziano said. "What's going on isn't right. It's not good for the children in our district, and I don't believe it's good for children anywhere.”

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School report tells a harrowing tale

Graziano asked that her son's name be withheld to avoid any further repercussions for him at school. On that day in May 2023, her son was taken to an office after things escalated.

He "began throwing materials around the office and yelling that he was mad and wanted to call his mom,” said the school's report on the incident, which the boy's mother shared with The Record and NorthJersey.com.

School employees tried to calm the child by "reminding him about the things that are out of his control and in his circle of control,” the report said. Another adult was called to “assist with the social-emotional aspect of the behavior.”

Staff members sat at a table with the first grader and “talked through some tools and options [he] could have utilized instead of being angry and throwing materials.” When that didn’t work, he started throwing “multiple pieces of furniture,” the school's report said.

One of the school's counselors brought in a set of mats, and then the three adults in the office switched from talking to Graziano's son to surrounding him. They used the barriers to isolate him against a wall "from all sides" for 23 minutes, according to the report.

It should have never gotten to that point, said Guy Stephens, founder of the Maryland-based Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint , a national nonprofit focused on eliminating the use of such tactics in schools. The group sees restraint and seclusion as punitive in the same vein as suspension, expulsion and corporal punishment: behavioral management techniques that are outdated and harmful.

What are the alternatives?

Instead, Stephens said, schools should be using approaches informed by neuroscience and driven by positive relationships built between school employees and students who most need their help. Understanding and supporting children’s behavior keeps situations from spiraling out of control, he said.

“It really needs to be 'how do we prevent getting these situations in the first place?'" Stephens said. "What can we do to better support kids, to better support teachers and staff, and avoid a situation that turns into a crisis like that?"

Bloomingdale Schools Superintendent Michael Nicosia said he couldn’t speak to any specific case in his district. But in general, he said, restraint and seclusion are reserved for emergencies and used only when absolutely necessary.

The district reported a total of 27 instances of restraint and seclusion for the first year of mandated reporting to the state. But the superintendent said 10 cases were reported in error due to a misreading of the new guidelines .

Bloomingdale has never left a child alone in a room, so by that definition, it has never secluded a student, Nicosia said. He said the state acknowledged the misreporting in follow-up correspondence, but Bloomingdale did not provide documentation of that despite a reporter's repeated requests.

Schools superintendent discusses 'last resort' tactics

There have been times when Bloomingdale students have been restrained, Nicosia acknowledged. When a student's behavior poses a direct threat to themselves or others, physical intervention can be used “as a last resort,” he said. He added that the tool is used strictly for crisis intervention and not for discipline or convenience.

Although he declined to discuss Graziano's case specifically, Nicosia said the district's protocols do not include sitting on students or otherwise putting pressure on them with mats. Instead, the staff is trained to surround a child in crisis with gym-style mats to ensure the kid can't reach dangerous implements such as scissors.

“If a student is tearing down a bulletin board and progresses to potentially harmful actions, we use mats to reduce the room size and remove dangerous elements. This helps us manage the situation without going hands-on unless absolutely necessary," Nicosia said. "We first try to manage the situation with other de-escalation techniques. If the student is a danger to themselves or others, then we may need to consider restraint. Some people mistakenly think we use mats to confine students like wrapping them in a burrito, which is not the case."

In Montclair, screams from the 'seclusion closet'

In Montclair, former teaching assistant Nicole Farjani was disturbed by what she saw and heard in kindergarten classes, where she said restraint and seclusion were used frequently.

Farjani was a kindergarten teaching assistant in the district from 2016 to 2019. After working for a few weeks in Charles H. Bullock School, she said, she began to notice sounds coming from an adjacent kindergarten classroom. The room, it turned out, had a “seclusion closet," where kids were sent when they misbehaved, Farjani said. She said she could hear children screaming and banging against the walls.

Bothered by the sounds, Farjani asked around and was told kindergarten through second grade classrooms were outfitted with small areas used to cool down anxious children.

"Sometimes I was seeing seclusion more than once a day,“ she said. ”I worked in a room directly next to where one of the seclusion closets was in a classroom. So I could hear the screaming of children saying, ‘Let me out! Help!’ They would bang against the walls."

The state's new data indicates Montclair reported using restraints 21 times in the 2022-23 school year and secluding students three times. The U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights is currently investigating two complaints about seclusion and restraint in the district, which serves 6,200 students. District officials did not respond to requests for comment about its policies in recent weeks.

Seclusion and restraint guidelines: What's allowed

The U.S. Education Department released guidance for local schools in 2022 to try to avoid the misuse of restraint and seclusion. The agency said educators needed better training to lessen ineffective and harmful interventions.

Children with disabilities accounted for 80% of students subjected to physical restraint and 77% of those placed in seclusion, despite making up only 13% of total student enrollment nationwide, the department said at the time.

The numbers appear even more lopsided in the Garden State : Based on state statistics, "85% of the students subjected to restraining or seclusion had disabilities … and when it comes to seclusion, 92% have disabilities," said Kinsell, of the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network, citing the New Jersey Education Department's annual report to lawmakers. “It is happening all over New Jersey.”

Rituals and lots of talking: NJ experts discuss how to prepare kids mentally for school

The state has issued its own guidance to try to tamp down on abusive discipline.In New Jersey schools, restraint and seclusion can be used only as a last resort when less restrictive interventions fail. Under the guidelines issued in 2018, schools are required to inform parents or guardians immediately when restraint is used, though not in instances of seclusion. That contrasts with federal guidelines, which call for notification in either case. Federal rules also require documentation and a debriefing after each incident.

New Jersey requires districts to maintain clear, accessible policies on these practices that are reviewed regularly and comply with federal laws.

Blocking maneuvers, behavior support are options

Though the federal guidelines are a step in the right direction, Kinsell said, making an allowance for restraint and seclusion in extreme cases is still a mistake.

"There is no reason in the world to use those interventions on kids," she said. "There are a lot of ways to support a child's behavior without going to that extreme, whether it's positive behavior support, which is research-based, or whether it's trauma-informed care.

"Even if you're in a situation where a child is dangerous to themself or others, there are blocking maneuvers," she said. "There's other things you can do without dragging a kid to a small room and locking them in there or trying to hold them down and hurting them."

Gene Myers covers disability and mental health for NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY Network. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today .

Email: myers@northjersey.com

Twitter: @myersgene

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Discipline in schools infringes on NJ disability rights, says mom. Why it still happens