Dee Alpert who is the publisher of the Special Education Muckracker website has written the following call to action to stop the adoption of rules that will allow the use of electric shock and extreme aversives against children with disabilities in New York State. Action is needed now. If you live in New York State write to your state officials. If you live outside of New York write to Secretary Spelling and your local Congressperson or Senator. If you have contacts in the media or in the public relations industry, please contact them to bring as much attention and pressure against this rulemaking action. Below is the letter from Dee Alpert that she has asked to be widely disseminated to protect children in New York and in other states, so New York will not serve as a precedent for other states.
In a nutshell, as part of a NYS govt. move to end out of state placements for exceptionally severely disabled kids, the NYS Education Department is moving to allow the use of all aversives, including electric shock as aversives on disabled kids - in all NYS schools and all publicly-operated or publicly-funded programs; in all state-approved private schools; in all residential schools. Disabled kids subject to family/juvenile court placements will come under this proposal, too. At this time, there is no legal or regulatory authorization for the use of painful aversives in any NYS school, public or private, state-approved or not. The way the proposal is written, it will - literally - allow any little local district to set up its own committee of "experts" - "experts" being completely undefined - and approve the district using any aversive it wants. It will protect districts, schools, programs, IEA's, from being sued for unconstitutional cruel and inhumane treatment of disabled kids, which appears to be what this proposal is designed to allow. It is simply cruel and inhumane, period. The proposal to allow this abuse is breathtaking in its scope and virtually unlimited in what it will permit.
The NYS Ed. Dept. is one of the few state education or state child welfare departments which currently approves (and pays for) sending severely disabled kids to the Judge Rotenberg School (MA), where aversive electric shocks are used on a continuous basis.
Currently, some NYS little local districts, some state-approved private special ed. schools, and IEA's (BOCES, here) do the following to kids with disabilities:
1. Young kids with autism being strapped into restraining Rifton Chairs for hours on end - daily. To make them stop flapping, stimming and force them to pay attention, I assume. This isn't just restraint, it's torture for young children who cannot necessarily communicate what's being done to them and are powerless to make it be stopped.
2. Young kids, some who have never been evaluated, much less classified as disabled, thrown into time out/isolation rooms - daily - for hours on end, with no free access to toilets or water. One was found unconscious in one a few years ago; it was hypothesized that he had a seizure, but nobody knows because nobody was watching him.
Kids being thrown into time out rooms for lengthy periods of time with no access to toilets or water. Some have floor coverings which retain dried feces, urine, saliva and other body fluids (one kid clawed his fingers bloody, trying to get out). I am told that at least some of these floor coverings therefore represent imminent public health dangers involving potential transmission of HIV, hepatitis, TB and other communicable diseases. NYSED's "guidelines" say that districts and IEA's have to meet all local safety and health codes, but don't say how; NYSED does not police this requirement. I know of no district or IEA which has a local health department check to see if time out rooms actually meet public health standards and requirements.
3. No limits on restraints at all. Kids of all ages being beaten up by adults in the course of being physically "restrained." Currently, NYSED has no guidelines, regulations, at all on restraints and no requirement whatsoever that anyone who uses them have any training whatsoever. The proposal would legitimize use of restraints and require training "as appropriate," with no definition of "appropriate." Think - 5 minutes of a training film - or less - for appropriate training. I get contacts re a kid being beaten or hurt while being "restrained" in regular little districts on a regular basis.
A teacher in an IEA threw a young developmentally disabled child into a time out room "because he didn't eat his lunch." Or so she told the mom, who found out about it by accident from another parent. Needless to say, this child had no Functional Behavior Assessment, no Behavior Improvement Plan and the IEA had never informed the mom that it had time out rooms, much less that it had any policy re their use. And this incident violated the facility's time out room policy. Teacher not disciplined, of course. (The NYSED proposal would permit the unrestrained use of restraints to "protect" any school property, including one piece of chalk, paper clip or one piece of paper.)
4. Currently, at least one school uses liver powder sprinkled on food as an aversive for disabled children's "bad" food-related behavior.
5. When an Associated Press reporter did a story showing that the % of districts and IEA's making "mandatory" corporal punishment reports to NYSED had decreased, while the number of reports of corporal punishment use had increased, NYSED called it a "reporting problem." The AP story also noted that one IEA teacher put a young child with a disability out in the cold, in winter, without shoes or jacket, as a punishment, and that as a result, she was given a letter telling her not to do it again. No discipline for the teacher. NYSED accepted filed this report; but did nothing about it. A State Senator, who is a retired cop, was quoted as saying that what the teacher did was a crime and she should have been prosecuted (but wasn't). This is typical. NYSED neither monitors nor actually regulates physical abuse of children in NYS schools, disabled or non-classified. Now, it seeks to protect such abuse by regularizing it via its proposed regulatory scheme.
NYSED is the only NYS govt. agency which currently approves kids being sent to the Judge Rotenberg School. In order to bring NYS kids back from the Judge Rotenberg School, the use of electric shock will be allowed, with the approval of a local school district's committee of self-defined "experts." There will be no standards for minimum credentials for these "experts;" no Ph.D.'s with specializations in Behavior required. NYSED will have to approve, using its own committee of "experts." NYSED has no behavioral experts on staff. Just as districts will be allowed to determine which kind of "expertise" they want to use (think - school psychologists at the MA level, with no graduate-level coursework in professional behavior management/modification - at best), NYSED will be allowed to determine the kind of "experts" it wants to use. [Dr. Mengele, would, unfortunately, be an "appropriately" qualified expert under this scheme.]
The process to approve use of painful aversives, including electric shock, will be the process NYSED currently uses to give a district or IEA a waiver of statutory and regulatory maximum class sizes. NYSED was asked to give so many, that it passed a regulation automatically giving all districts and IEA's such a waiver for one kid extra per class: I have never, in 20 years of dealing with NYS special ed., heard of NYSED denying any district or IEA's request for a class size waiver.
NYSED has had "guidelines" on the use of time out rooms for 12 years. They are so vague that they prohibit virtually nothing, but more importantly, there are not policed or monitored by NYSED in any meaningful way, manner or form. In one case I'm familiar with, an advocate sent NYSED a picture of a time out room which had a chain and padlock on its door. NYSED's "guidelines" bar locked doors. When the situation hit the media, NYSED's Regional Associate made an appointment; visited the district and, since the chain and padlock had been conveniently removed for her visit, found no violation of this requirement - although the complaint finding letter did acknowledge that NYSED had received a picture of the time out room, with a chain and padlock on its door. This district was found to have violated NYSED's rule that district discipline codes (for all kids) have the use of time out rooms in them or they can't be used, and this was the only "violation" of any regulation, rule or law found in this horrific case. The district was directed to either stop using the time out room or put use of a time out room in its district discipline code. The administrators who threatened the child with something bad if he told his mom that he was consistently locked up in a time out room were not disciplined. The administrators who told the kid's untenured teacher that if she told the boy's mom about the time out room, she'd be fired were not disciplined.
Essentially, NYSED's proposed regulations will legitimize the use of horrific, unlimited aversives when they are not protected by law or regulation now, thus protecting districts, IEA's and state-approved private schools from suit if they use and abuse them. Use of restraints of any and all kinds, for any and all periods of time, will similarly be protected. Time out room use/abuse, which is currently covered by "guidelines" which have no force of law and will also be regularized and protected. NYSED has never removed the certification or license of anyone found to have violated its time out room "guidelines."
NYSED could have set up regulations which would only have tolerated and accepted the use of electric shock in a few small state-approved residential schools which have applied to take kids who are going to be removed from the Judge Rotenberg school (after a media frenzy/scandal - one mom whose child is there is suing her district.) Instead, it proposes regulations which legitimize the use of aversives, restraints and time out/isolation rooms in every district, IEA, state-operated residential school, state-approved private school, etc. in the entire State of New York.
NYSED operates 2 residential schools for several disabled kids. A horrific scandal hit the media last year re one of them - the NYS School for the Blind - where medically fragile, multiply-disabled kids in its Intermediate Care Facility were found by outside inspectors to be in "imminent danger" - because the abuse and neglect was simply horrendous and had been getting worse, as documented by 5 full years of outside inspection reports. Each year, NYSED came up with a "corrective action report." Each year, the corrective action report was written, filed, approved and accepted, and then thrown into a wastebin, ignored. While NYSED's highest officials at headquarters claimed that HQ knew nothing about these life-threatening violations of law and of simple humanity, I have unimpeachable documentary evidence showing that NYSED Special Education Quality Assurance Associate had an office physically located on the campus of the School for the Blind. The entire, horrifying inspection report which resulted in a threat to remove this School's Medicaid Provider Agreement can be found on my web site at: http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com/specialreports.html (the 2 "OMRDD" reports dated May 2005).
I also have an outside consultant's report from 2002 showing that sexual molestation of these profoundly disabled and medically fragile students was pervasive: a 2004 letter of resignation from the School's Physician, because an on-campus sexual molestation of a student was covered up by administration, a section of the 2005 inspection report indicating that despite strong evidence of sexual molestation (scratches on left arm and breast; later, a bruise on her mouth and scratches on her groin), no mandated investigation of these "unexplained injuries" was ever made. While NYSED's Commissioner, Richard Mills, claimed that he and his officials knew nothing about these happenings, nor about the outside inspection reports issued over the course of 5 years, from another state agency, the fact remains that the 2004 School Physician's resignation letter was addressed to Richard Mills.
Mills and his highest officials, including his head of special education and vocational rehab., were totally in the loop during all relevant periods regarding the life-threatening abuses at the NYSED-operated School for the Blind. Mills and his head of special education and vocational rehab. approved profoundly disabled kids being sent to the Judge Rotenberg School, where the use of electric shock as an aversive is routine and pervasive, at NYSED's expense - and now wish to permit its use in all NYS schools, including regular little local districts with total enrollments of 300 kids. To help save the State of New York money currently spent on out of state placements. Why should NY send kids to Massachusetts for electric shock torture, when it can let schools do it right here?
Under these circumstances, there is simply no question that NYSED will approve, and tolerate, use and severe abuse of painful aversives, including electric shocks, all over New York State; there is no question that they already tolerate, and will continue to tolerate, horrific abuses of time out/isolation rooms and all kinds of physical restraint abuses - from severe beatings through allowing young autistic children to be strapped into Rifton Chairs for hours and hours on end.
I am so personally morally disturbed at the thought that my tax money will be used to approve and support routine torture of disabled children that I am - personally - seriously considering going on a hunger strike in Albany (NYSED's HQ where the Board of Regents meeting to approve these regulations and practices will be held) - before the approval vote is taken - and I am strongly considering continuing a hunger strike until use of aversives, abusive restraint and all time out/isolation rooms are made illegal in the State of New York. This is a very personal decision and I am taking my time making it because if I do it, I will do it as long as it takes, period. If I am arrested for being on public property while doing this, I will hunger strike in jail. This is a very grave kind of decision to have to contemplate, but I feel at this this time that I cannot live with the thought of my government condoning, and then carrying out, such appalling torture of severely disabled children and young adults and I believe it must be stopped by any peaceful methods necessary. I cannot stop the NYS government from spending my tax dollars to support and perpetuate electric shock used on young disabled children; I cannot force the US Department of Education and US Department of Justice to stop tolerating this abuse.
In the mean time, I ask each of you to think about this situation and remember - please - that NYSED has been, unfortunately, a leader in all kinds of abuse and neglect of children (and adults) with disabilities. NYSED's own staff have recently been convicted of stealing computers, digicams (and probably cash money) meant for disabled adults who needed it so they could receive vocational training leading to jobs. NYSED's administrators were found to have actively urged districts to falsify IEP's so they could get Medicaid payments for transportation for disabled kids which parents neither knew about nor agreed to, and also urged administrators to go back and routinely falsify old IEP's they had not so falsified in the first place. Or should I say IEP's they concocted and then flagrantly falsified, which is in this circumstance a serious federal felony. I have seen NYSED's initiatives on special ed. issues, all of which were terrible for kids with disabilities and their families, start here and spread nationally, like wildfire. NYSED is, unfortunately, a leader in national disabled student abuse initiatives of all kinds. You can't rest comfortable in the knowledge that "it's just in New York; they wouldn't do THAT here." Because if history tells us anything, it tells us that what NYSED does WILL spread to your state, district and possibly the little regular public school just down the road from your home. It's happened before; it will happen again.
ACTION NEEDED:
Please pass this {letter] on to every single person, organization and group you can think of who might be disturbed by what NYSED is proposing (and what NYS districts, IEA's and schools are already doing, in some cases). Aside from disability-related groups, I'd love to see folks contact the American Pediatrics Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and every other mainstream organized professional group around. Perhaps the American Medical Association will expel any member physician who assists in the use of electric shock punishers in NYS. Perhaps the American Psychiatric Association will take a firm position against this torture. Perhaps your local Human Rights Commission will issue a position paper or statement. Or your local ARC. Ask them to get involved. Every disability-related outfit should know about this - and hopefully will join.
Dee Alpert, Publisher
The Special Education Muckraker
http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com
I'm kind of confused, because the Newsday article,
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lishok204749114may20,0,1480959.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines
says the state is looking at eliminating all aversives
The State Education Department has recommended a prohibition, with some exceptions, on the use of so-called aversive therapies to control troubled students, including a mild type of electric shock that has generated controversy on Long Island.
[snip]
Rebecca Cort, deputy commissioner in the education department and author of the report, said the proposal stops short of a ban on aversive therapy and recommends that it be used on a "child-specific" basis. The proposal applies to all New York students, including those sent out of state. The therapies also include physical restraints and dietary restrictions. She has also called for creation of a panel of experts - similar to one in California - that school districts must consult before they allow the use of an aversive therapy.
Posted by: Liz | May 22, 2006 at 05:04 PM
I was in a emotional handicap class and they had a time out room for the smaller kids to calm them down. However, it was only to for a few minutes. At the same time I was afraid of it. I saw a teacher holding my friend down on the ground with her arm behind her back to calm her down from her anger. She came from a broken home and needed to calm down. But at the same time the teacher could of broke her arm.
Posted by: natalie | June 20, 2006 at 02:38 PM
Pardon my intrusion here -- this issue arises in relation to the Judge Rottenberg School in Massachusetts, where about half the students come from New York. The electric shock treatments there are approved in advance by a judge and the child's parents. Are you suggesting that you or other disinterested "voters" are in a position to nullify their judgments?
Posted by: wavemaker | July 17, 2006 at 07:44 AM
I live in Mass, I work on an adolescent pyschunit, as a staff nurse. You obviously don't spend quality time with these troubled adolescents. How could you, you're too busy making thing look good on paper. I see so many kids that are diagnosed with ODD,PDD,BIPOLAR,MAJOR DEPRESSION, AUTISM, and the vlist goes on. Maybe you would prefer more medication, o and therapy when i see the same kids walking through a door for the 5th time in 3months obviously the terapy doesn't work. Oh, i forgot to mention the DYS children we get, that would have no trouble ripping your throat out and justify it and put the blame on staff. Oh, and recently the little sweetie pie from Lincoln-Sudbury High in Ma, that just recently stabbed and killed his peer, but he has Asbergers so I guess he's excused. Or maybe you would like to blame the parents, bottom line most of these kids have no boundaries and are impulsive, yes aversion therapy might be a little harsh, but you you rather make future drug addicts out of them. Maybe you forgot they can be very manipulative, they have no choice, the system has failed them, there is a fine line between abuse and punishment, but maybe you would like to give them a big hug after they have beaten you. Seeing most of these kids lack self-discipline. As a nurse i have tried every approach(I do not work on a unit that uses aversion therapy), i have taken care of adolescents from rich,poor,and middle class families with varying and multiple diagnoses. These same sweeties i have showed kindness have turned around and hit me, kicked me, spit on me and abused me. I'm sure they've done the same to others, but maybe you are the cure all. I apologize for the sarcasim, but you need to be a little more updated. The minute these kids get a psych diagnosis is an excuse. Did you ever think some kids as some adults are, are just plain bad. When teachers have to clear out and disrupt a whole classroom because someone is having a fit, that's a problem. These adolescents have common problems, anger, rage, and hurt and they can justify anything they do wrong. So my whole point is this if parents want their kids there, what is your problem. Maybe pain is all some people understand God knows I've taken care of enough Borderline adolescents who like to cut themselves. I would just like to add this: Most facilities today are understaffed(4 patients to 1 staff) looks good on paper though. Also i do not penalized the kids for swearing at me, breaking walls(which i then have to send them out from x-rays for hand pain, because they think they broke their hand) i could care less about the walls, slamming doors, or throwing things, it's a form of release and that's ok. I have them go to their room and cool down, and yes i have restrained some or have had some in the infamous quite room. I have also had some who feel safer being restrainted and safe in the quite room, for whatever their reasons are, mostly it's attention, something they don't get or don't feel they get, because as you should know if they don't feel safe stated or observed they are monitored in the quite room. I'm quite sure this will not make your page for others to read and that's ok, but i do feel bad for the parents who are seeking help and have exhuasted every effort to no avail, but maybe you can take their sweeties to your house for a week and fix them. It's their choice, those parents pay pretty good money to send their kids there, but i guess that doesn't matter to you.
Posted by: janette | January 25, 2007 at 10:43 PM
As a School Psychologist, I resent Ms. Alpert's snide dig about our qualifications and level of expertise. Most SP curriculums reqire a minimum of 72 graduate school hours which DOES include extensive education in behavior management/modification, (among many other areas) and then three more years of field supervision by a senior SP is required. These requirements far exceed those required for most master's level Licensed Clinical Social Workers, whom I do not see Ms. Alpert attacking. Ms. Alpert may be referring to "psychometricians" whom some states hire, ostensibly for testing purposes only.
I personally have not met anyone in my profession who endorses inappropriate use of exclusion and restraint, or punishment as a means of genuine behavior change.
A mechanism for getting rid of incompetent and/or sociopathic school administrators would go much further toward solving the problems of students being abused under the guise of, "discipline." Such individuals are the bane of the SP's existence. Such individuals are protected by the system, and we are not. School system politics is like any other politics....omnipresent and too often omnipotent.
Posted by: solo | April 05, 2007 at 11:49 AM