This is just NOT acceptable.
Parents of special needs student irate over duct-taped shoes
The struggles are not new to families of children with disabilities, nor are the troubling stories that have made headlines — children improperly restrained in chairs, confined in “safe rooms,’’ or even struck by school employees.
But what Nate and Elizabeth Searcy found when their 8-year-old daughter returned from school Monday sent shockwaves well beyond their Westside Indianapolis home. Shaylyn, who has Down syndrome, had her socks bound tightly to her shoes with duct tape in her classroom at Westlake Elementary School in Wayne Township.
“It’s an outrage,’’ said Kim Dodson, associate executive director of Arc of Indiana, a special-needs advocacy group. What happened to Shaylyn, she said, is something that could happen to any special-needs child in Indiana – one of 20 states that have no laws protecting them from the misuse of “seclusion and restraint” policies in schools.
“I think that it is time for the state of Indiana to do something to require all school corporations to have some type of policy on record,” Dodson said Tuesday.
The incident is the latest of several in area schools during the past four years, including a mother’s complaint about her 9-year-old son being locked in a small “safe room” in a Pike Township school last November. Perry Township schools on Indianapolis’ Southside has dealt with at least two incidents during the past five years – an now-retired educator accused of twice striking a disabled man, and a teacher accused of deliberating trying to sicken a 7-year-old boy with autism and food allergies.
Shaylyn Searcy’s parents said she could not even stand up and walk down the aisle of her school bus when she returned home Monday.
"She said, 'I can't. It hurts.' So we had to carry her off the bus," said Elizabeth Searcy, 29.
"She had duct tape all the way from her feet up around the tops of her ankles. And it was industrial duct tape. It literally pulled fabric off her socks and vinyl off her shoes, it was so strong."
Searcy said her daughter sometimes refuses to put on her shoes, and speculates that is why someone used duct tape in this case.
"They have called me about it before," Searcy said. "I don't know why they couldn't have called me again this time."
The Searcys immediately took their daughter back to the school, Elizabeth Searcy said, and sought help removing the duct tape. That took 30 minutes.
The tape caused bruising on Shaylyn’s ankles, Searcy said.
Searcy said this was the first year Shaylyn and her brother Riley, 6, were at Westlake Elementary School. The family previously sent their children to another Wayne Township school, Bridgeport Elementary, but needed to change schools after moving last year.
Searcy said Shaylyn is not going back to Westlake, and they’ve made special arrangements to have her return to Bridgeport on Thursday. Nate Searcy said they are also speaking with children’s advocacy groups about the incident.
Wayne Township released a statement Tuesday saying they are conducting an investigation and have notified the Indiana Department of Child Services.
“If warranted, we will file a report with the agency,” the statement read.
“We have also involved our own law enforcement officers in the investigation. When the investigation into this incident is concluded, we will take appropriate action.”
Wayne Township School Board President Stan Ellis said Tuesday evening that board members are not commenting on this incident, and will rely on the district’s communication staff for any public statements about it.
Advocates like Dodson said incidents like these are the result of fundamental problems that need to be fixed at the state level. Only 16 states have statutes that limit the use of restraint to emergencies involving immediate risk of harm, according to an April 2012 report published by the Autism National Committee.
Indiana is not one of them — but while the state does not have any official statutes, there are still recommendations.
Those guidelines stem from a 2009 order issued by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan that all states review their policies and guidelines about the use of seclusion and restraint, and allow for physical restraint if a student is posing a physical risk.
“Some schools do a really nice job with it,” Dodson said. “Some schools don’t do a nice job with it.
“And some schools do nothing.”
Some state legislators are trying to create a law that would address the issue. Senate Bill 345 is up for a vote in the Senate Education Committee next week, and would require local school boards to approve policies on seclusion and restraints.
Indiana Sen. Randy Head, a Republican from Logansport, authored the bill.
He said that if passed, it would require schools to provide training for school personnel, outline a protocol for notifying parents about when seclusion or restraint are used and create standardized definitions for common seclusion and restraint measures. Head said he couldn’t speculate on the Searcys’ case, and did not know how differently the issue would have been handled had his bill been in effect.
“Other states have thought about this problem and addressed it and kept laws on the books,” he said. “They’ve come up with solutions that haven’t been too unwieldy, and haven’t had any consequences.”
Call Star reporter Bill McCleery at (317) 444-6083.
Be gentle.
