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OUR CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND
www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com


JANUARY 23, 2004

AND THE BEAT(ing) GOES ON

This has been a hard week for us. We’re not really sure why. Maybe it has been the subject matter of the cases we have been involved with. On Monday we met with a single mother whose only child died at school in Saginaw on December 5th. Her 12-year-old son, Calvin Wade, had Prater-Willi Syndrome and was “restrained” by school personnel after supposedly having a seizure and vomiting incident. Calvin is the second Michigan student with disabilities known to die in Michigan public schools while being restrained in this 2003-2004 school year. Michael Renner Lewis, who had autism, died in the Parchment Schools on the first day of school last August, also supposedly while being restrained after having a seizure. Both Calvin and Michael were African American.

We have not had the benefit of reviewing the actual records behind Calvin’s and Michael’s cases. Our state protection and advocacy system, Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, Inc., is investigating both deaths, and we expect the Michigan public will learn more about both deaths in the near future.

Even without complete access to the records, we think these are two too many deaths in any school year. We cannot help but wonder whether both Michael’s and Calvin’s deaths might have been avoided if the behavior provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] had been followed in their cases. Current IDEA law requires that schools, as part of the Individualized Educational Planning process, review a student’s behavioral history and challenges to see if any behavior issues interfere either with the child’s ability or the ability of her or his classmates to obtain a free, appropriate public education.

To us, the very fact that neither Michael’s nor Calvin’s school personnel had any hesitation in using physical restraint management techniques leads us to think that the school believed their need to restrain the students was clear. But where was the programming behind that belief? Where was the schools’ accountability to Michael and Calvin? Since when is it common practice to physically restrain students who are coming out of seizures? Hasn’t that practice been discredited for decades?

Wouldn’t good, proper, and safe behavior intervention techniques have resulted from proper compliance with IDEA? Isn’t saving lives at least part of why IDEA ‘97 focuses so forcefully and proactively on effective functional assessments of behavior and the use of positive behavior support plans?

So now you’re a United States Senator or Member of Congress. If you’re from Michigan you know that your public schools have had two Black students with disabilities literally die in the restraining arms of school personnel. You don’t know whether there was any behavior programming in place that authorized either school to use physical restraint with the students. You don’t know whether the school personnel who actually made the decision to use physical intervention had any training or support in either the decision-making or the implementation stages of the restraint process. You don’t know whether the other school personnel who physically assisted in the physical takedowns or restraints were properly trained. And you sure don’t have any strong public expression from either school district that such accidents won’t happen again. You still don’t understand why these incidents happened.

And now the Congressional leadership is telling you that IDEA needs to be changed; that student programming efforts are too onerous and time consuming for the teachers and school; and that the discipline process is putting school personnel and other students at risk. How can you even think of weakening IDEA when students with disabilities are physically dying in the hands of school personnel? How can you rush to remove the student protections from IDEA when students are dying? How many other states have experienced similar deaths this year? How can you not speak out against a rush to judgment when it at least seems obvious that the schools – at least Michael’s and Calvin’s schools – are not trying to make IDEA ‘97 work in the way it was intended?

We know for certain that Michigan parents, students, and voters ultimately will learn more about the circumstances surrounding Michael’s and Calvin’s deaths. We certainly intend to do what we can from a personal and professional level to help better understand how they could have died. We are certain that schools do not set out to cause the death of children in schools. But still, these deaths have happened. We have had similar restraint deaths in Michigan over the last several years, at the hands of store security guards, residential care aides, and children’s home workers.

We suggest that the Senators and Members of Congress start taking a serious look behind the school administration and lobby’s agenda to weaken IDEA. Is it not enough to have governmental or sovereign immunity as a primary protection? Are schools and their lobbyists so clueless about parent and community reaction that they expect us to accept less protection and support for our children with disabilities who attend public schools? Who are the children who are dying at school? And who are the parents who are burying them?

When is Congress going to understand that the IDEA “reauthorization” is not about helping students? Or as Bob Dylan sang, “how many deaths will it take til they know that too many people have died?” We all need a wake up call, and we all need to wake up our Congress. This is about life and reality, and not about politics as usual. IDEA is life and death to 6.5 million students and their families. It is about time Congress got that message. Tell them.

Tricia & Calvin Luker, today's parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com


©2004 Our Children Left Behind.

Our Children Left Behind [OCLB] was created and is owned/operated by parent volunteers (Sandy Alperstein, Tricia & Calvin Luker, Shari Krishnan, and Debi Lewis). Permission to forward, copy, and/or post this article is granted provided that it is unedited and attributed to the author(s) and www.ourchildrenleftbehind.com. For more about OCLB or to share information, please contact parentvolunteer@ourchildrenleftbehind.com.