restraint and Seclusion in the 2011 Legislative session

[Guest guest]

Hello Fellow Parents,

Some of you may remember last year's attempt to pass a Bill in the Florida

Legislature that would restrict the use of restraint and ban the use of

seclusion on disabled students in public schools.

Because the Bill had such strong grassroots support and 35 co-sponsors in the

House the Bill could not be left to die, and so in circumstances like this when

there is strong opposition to a popular Bill the Legislature often chooses to

" gut and pass. " One of the items in the Bill that did pass was a reporting

provision. All incidents of restraint and seclusion are now to be reported to

the parents and DOE.

In the files section of this site there are 3 reports from either DOE or the

House Education Committee that document this reporting from the beginning of

this school year through January 21, 2011, or approximately the first half of

the school year.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/sList/files/

To recap the statistics:

There were 5,459 incidents of Restraint Statewide

By contrast there were 1,363 in Orange County and 292 in Broward

127 of Statewide restraints were for over 1 hour, 2 were for over 6 hours.

39% of restraints were for PreK through 3rd graders

There were 2,157 incidents of Seclusion State wide

189 were for over 1 hour, 109 of those were in Hillsborough County alone

The Legislature wanted to collect these statistics to determine the extent, if

any, of this issue.

I think it is safe to say:

Tallahassee, we have a problem

Steve Moyer