Congressional Democrats recently reintroduced legislation, the Keeping All Students Safe Act, that would block schools from secluding students in locked rooms or using certain types of physical restraints. Supporters cite investigations revealing that schools restrain and seclude special education students thousands of times a day and hundreds of thousands of times a year, sometimes resulting in serious injury or even death.
Under the proposal, schools receiving federal money would not be permitted to seclude or restrain students unless necessary to protect student or staff safety. It would fully ban restraint practices that restrict students’ breathing, such as prone or supine restraints, and would offer training “to address school-expected behavior with evidence-based, proactive strategies.”
The proposal has support from a wide array of disability rights advocacy groups, as well as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and parents’ groups including the National PTA. The country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, has remained “neutral” on the proposed federal legislation. The American Federation of Teachers has changed its position from “neutral” to “support” but has not officially endorsed the new bill. The American Association of School Administrators opposes efforts to pass a federal law, noting that most states already have laws governing the practices.
Similar legislation has been introduced in Congress since 2009 but has failed to pass. The bill faces long odds in a divided Congress. It has gained supporters this year, including U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who leads the Senate committee overseeing education and now backs the proposal.
