Why Was a 6-Year-Old Handcuffed at School?
Photo by Thinkstock
When a Georgia mother arrived at
her 6-year-old son’s school last week in response to a call that he was
misbehaving, she was greeted by a shocking surprise:
Lakaisha Reid’s 6-year-old son Patrick is a special needs student at Pine Ridge Elementary
in Stone Mountain, Ga. On the morning of December 5, Reid got a call
from the school asking her to pick up her son and bring him home early.
“They said he wasn’t having a good day,” Reid tells Yahoo Parenting. “My
husband and I walked into the school and heard my son yelling and
screaming.” The couple found him in a room on his knees with his hands
cuffed behind his back. The school resource officer was standing behind
Patrick, holding him in place.
“The first thing I said was ‘Get
those handcuffs off my kid,’ because that’s something no mother wants to
see on a 6-year-old,” the mom of four says. “He wasn’t robbing anyone,
he wasn’t harming anyone. Kids should know if you do something wrong you
will pay a consequence, but handcuffs at 6? That’s not right.”
The DeKalb County School District sent the following statement to Yahoo Parenting: “A
six year old student at Pine Ridge Elementary School was acting in a
disruptive manner and being self-destructive during school today. He ran
out of school onto a busy, public street and was pursued by three
school staff members. The student was secured and returned to the school
and placed in a room with a special education teacher, the school
counselor and the School Resource Officer (SRO) to protect him from
doing harm to himself. After several unsuccessful attempts, his parents
were contacted and asked to come immediately to the school. For
approximately one hour, the student was scratching, kicking and hitting
school personnel and continued to exhibit violent behavior, running into
walls, banging his head on tables and placing his health at risk. At
this point, the SRO placed handcuffs on the student to protect him from
harming himself. When the parents arrived, they were told the student
was handcuffed for his personal safety.”
However, Reid insists that her
son’s bruises are the result of using handcuffs. “If he was running into
walls and hurting himself, he would have scratches and other bruises,”
she says. “Plus, how did he even get to the front door to get out of the
school? Who is doing their job there?”
Reid says she has been called to
the school on other occasions for her son’s behavioral problems. The boy
is enrolled in an Individualized Education Program (IEP) which aims to
address a student’s learning or behavioral issues. The program
also calls for a specific response when students act up. “They are
trained to calm him down, to soothe him, to restrain him with their
hands if necessary,” she says. “Handcuffs shouldn’t be in the picture.
That causes more problems. I want him to be safe – that’s what an IEP is
for.”
Forcefully restraining students is a surprisingly common practice. A recent study conducted by the nonprofit news organization ProPublica found
that the practice of restraining or secluding students (confining them
against their will) was used more than 267,000 times nationwide in the
2012 school year. A letter issued to schools that same year by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan urged
educators to avoid these tactics. “Every effort should be made to
prevent the need for the use of restraint and seclusion. … Any
behavioral intervention must be consistent with the child’s rights to be
treated with dignity and to be free from abuse,” Duncan wrote.
“Restraint or seclusion should never be used except in situations where a
child’s behavior poses imminent danger of serious physical harm to self
or others, and restraint and seclusion should be avoided to the
greatest extent possible without endangering the safety of students and
staff. … As many reports have documented, the use of restraint and
seclusion can have very serious consequences, including, most
tragically, death. Furthermore, there continues to be no evidence that
using restraint or seclusion is effective in reducing the occurrence of
the problem behaviors that frequently precipitate the use of such
techniques.”
Reid says Patrick won’t return to
school before she meets with his teachers on Thursday. “He’s not ready
to go back,” she says. In the meantime, Reid says she hopes that the
school resource officers will receive special training for how to handle
students with special needs.
The school echoed her sentiment
in its statement. “Additional training for School Resource Officers and
other school staff for dealing with similar circumstances will be
provided.”
