Vermont lawmakers are considering placing restrictions on restraints and seclusion, controversial practices in which students are physically immobilized or detained in school.
On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education heard testimony on H.409, which would prohibit schools from secluding students and limit the use of physical restraints. As written, the bill also would require officials to report and track any instances of restraint and seclusion in schools.
Advocates argue that the practices can be dangerous and traumatic and disproportionately affect students with disabilities.
“That kind of trauma does stick with students and their families,” Rep. Theresa Wood, D-Waterbury, the bill’s sponsor, told lawmakers Tuesday. “It’s not something that staff and teachers also want to do.”
Dr. Melissa Houser, executive director of the neurodivergence advocacy group All Brains Belong VT, testified in favor of the bill Tuesday.
“Vermont has made so much effort over the past decade enhancing trauma-informed schools, trauma-informed health care, trauma-informed everything,” she said. “And yet Vermont law currently allows for children to be traumatized by being immobilized by physical force at school.”
The committee’s attention to the bill comes just three days before a key legislative deadline. Bills that fail to clear their first committee by “crossover” on Friday generally cannot pass both chambers by the end of the session, though lawmakers can continue to work on them in the second year of the biennium.
“This is not a bill that’s going to make crossover,” Rep. Peter Conlon, D-Cornwall, the chair of the House Education Committee, said Tuesday. “However, it is definitely a very important and very serious issue that we look forward to taking more testimony on later in the month.”
Restraints and seclusions are supposed to be rare in Vermont. Under state rules, they are prohibited unless “a student’s behavior poses an imminent and substantial risk of physical injury to the student or others.”
But despite those restrictions, Wood said, “a lot of restraint and seclusion is happening in schools, or has been happening in schools.”
In Wood’s district — Harwood Union Unified School District — schools have come under scrutiny for their use of restraint and seclusion, as VTDigger reported last year. In the 2017-18 school year, Harwood Union recorded 451 instances of restraint, the most of any district in the state.
Those numbers have decreased since then, according to Harwood Union superintendent Michael Leichliter, and the district has placed a moratorium on the use of restraints and seclusion in its schools.
In its current form, the bill would prohibit all uses of seclusion, as well as prone and supine restraints — practices in which students are held face-down or face-up on the ground.
“Physical restraint or physical escort that is life-threatening, restricts breathing, or restricts blood flow” also would be banned. The bill also would require school officials to immediately contact a student’s parent after an instance of restraint or seclusion, and schools would be required to report all restraints or seclusions to the state Agency of Education.
The agency, meanwhile, would be required to collect data on all instances of restraints and seclusions and “develop and implement a performance review system.”
As written, the bill would apply to all schools receiving state and federal funds.