Victory for Georgia Students

The following was originally written and posted on July 8 by Leslie K. Lipson, Staff Attorney with the Georgia Advocacy Office.  Many thanks to her for allowing me to share this here and for her unending advocacy efforts for Georgia's children!.  
Congratulations to all who helped and are continuing to help fight this battle for Georgia Students!


Rule Passed
July 8, 2010
Today is a historic day for Georgia public school students, as the State Board of Education voted unanimously to enact Rule 160-5-1-.35 which prohibits the use of seclusion, prone restraint, mechanical restraint, and chemical restraint. The Rule will limit the use of physical restraint to those situations involving imminent danger. Additionally, the Rule requires schools to notify parents within one school day that their child has been restrained. Before today’s historic vote, schools could restrain or seclude any student, at any time, for any reason.

The Safe Schools Initiative commends the Department of Education and the State Board of Education on this inaugural action to limit these dangerous practices. However, one key safeguard is noticeably missing: there are no provisions for reporting incidents of restraint beyond informing parents. Oversight, data collection and analysis are pivotal in identifying schools that need additional support to appropriately maintain a safe educational environment. After receiving overwhelming public support for data collection, the Board decided to withhold data collection about individual districts until the federal government mandates such practice. There is federal legislation considering the issue that is currently in committee, but the timetable and outcome are unknown. The Board publicly announced its eventual intent to collect outcome data; but the timeline, methodology, and stakeholder access to information are all unknown.

The Safe Schools Initiative is a collaborative effort of five organizations – The Georgia Advocacy Office, the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Center for Leadership in Disability at Georgia State University, the Institute on Human Development and Disability at the University of Georgia, and Parent to Parent of Georgia – to end the restraint and seclusion of students in Georgia schools.

For more information about the Safe Schools Initiative, please contact Jenny Holland at (404) 885-1234 or jholland@thegao.org.