JoAnna Holton’s son struggled with his new school environment when he started Kindergarten at Jamison Elementary School in the Central Bucks School District last year.
“Hitting himself,” said the mom of the then 5-year-old boy with autism. “They said he just seems to not be able to calm down and, like, they would say, ‘We can handle it but we just want to let you know.’”
Holton’s son is also non-verbal.
She tried helping on her end by putting her son on ADHD medication.
“See if that could help him feel better in his skin and better in those situations of like the whole newness,” she said.
But as the months went on, she said, he continued coming home with injuries.
“He would have bruises on his ear and then in his right ear, behind his ear,” she said. “It would be like total like shock, you know, and heartbreak.”
She trusted the staff at the school. So, she asked the boy’s doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) to increase his medication.
Then in December, she received a call from Warwick Police about an investigation into abuse in her son’s classroom.
A classroom aide had accused the teacher and educational aide of abusing and neglecting the classroom’s four autistic children. They ranged from 5- to 8-years-old.
Police didn’t file criminal charges. But a federally authorized investigation from Disability Rights Pennsylvania found the aide’s allegations to be “credible” and “corroborated.”
The state Department of Education found that the district restrained Holton’s son — along with the son of a school board member — by using desks to wedge them in their chairs against the wall.
“The teacher or the teacher’s aide would sit on the desk while he would be freaking out because he would be held in that spot so he would hit himself,” she said, referring to the aide’s allegation noted in both state reports.
Holton says she didn’t know the full extent of what happened in the classroom until she got a call from the school district in the spring.
“The Special Ed supervisor called me and said that he was restrained 3,193 times,” she said, her voice breaking.
That was over the course of four months.
“I remember, like, catching my breath and saying, ‘Wait, you mean minutes, minutes?’ and she said, ‘No, times,'” Holton said .
The son of school board member James Pepper was in the same classroom.
“They were so completely and utterly failed,” Pepper said in an August board meeting.
Pepper’s son, who also has autism and is non-verbal, was restrained an estimated 2,933 times, according to an email the district sent Pepper and his wife recapping a phone call about the restraints.
In total, the Central Bucks School District reported more than 6,400 restraints for the 2024-25 school year. That’s nearly a quarter of the total number of restraints reported statewide last year.
“Six thousand is alarming,” Pennsylvania Department of Education Secretary Carrie Rowe said in an interview with the NBC10 Investigators. “Something has to be going wrong and additional oversight is needed.”
Rowe said the state has begun “targeted monitoring” with Central Bucks and are determining “where the gaps are.”
“It would be wrong for us to think that this is just a problem of Central Bucks,” said Margie Wakelin, a lawyer with the Education Law Center whose work includes representing families of children who have been restrained.
Wakelin isn’t involved in the Central Bucks situation.
“I really hope that the state will recognize that oversight is necessary, particularly related to the use of restraints,” she said.
The NBC10 investigators obtained exclusive information that shows how many times kids have been restrained in Pennsylvania schools.
It shows the use of restraints has gone up drastically in Southeastern Pennsylvania – nearly tripling in the last four years.
“This is a crisis that needs intervention immediately,” Wakelin said.
About a fifth of Pennsylvania students have disabilities — ranging from dyslexia to autism.
State law says that restraints may be used when students with disabilities act in a manner that is a danger to themselves or others and when less restrictive measures have not been effective.
Schools have 30 days to report an instance to the state.
Rowe says when her department sees an increase at a district, it starts asking questions.
“Are there any particular patterns, particularly in that school or the district or perhaps the region? What are the commonalities with regard to… what training is being used and what vendors are being used,” she said. “Every time we see these types of increases, or even if a specific restraint is of concern to us, we’re going into that school.”
The department later told the NBC10 Investigators that other than Central Bucks School District, it has only officially intervened in one other school.
Back in Bucks, Holton’s son is currently out of school.
He finished the 2024-25 school year in the classroom, following the firing of some of the staff in the classroom and administrators.
He was supposed to start at a private school for children with autism in the area in September, following what Holton said was a verbal agreement from the district that it would send the required paperwork. But nearly two months into the school year, Holton says that has not happened.
“Here we are, just still struggling, still trying to find a way for him to be where he needs to be and get the program that he deserves, that is necessary and that he’s owed,” she said.
Through a spokesperson, the school district declined to speak about the Holton situation. The district issued a statement saying many of the questions we had “involve ongoing legal proceedings, which the district cannot address for privacy and legal reasons.”
The Central Bucks School Board fired the superintendent and several administrators in response to the abuse investigations and reports.
The district spokesperson said that Central Bucks ensures all training and certification standards are met for staff who work with students with disabilities.
A spokesperson for the teacher in question declined an interview on her behalf. In a prior statement, the teacher called the allegations false claims. The teacher’s aide did not return a call seeking comment.