{"id":16827,"date":"2025-10-27T18:19:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/16827\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T18:19:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:19:19","slug":"concerns-grow-over-restraints-for-pa-students-with-disabilities-nbc10-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/16827\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerns grow over restraints for Pa. students with disabilities \u2013 NBC10 Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

JoAnna Holton\u2019s son struggled with his new school environment when he started Kindergarten at Jamison Elementary School in the Central Bucks School District<\/a> last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHitting himself,\u201d said the mom of the then 5-year-old\u00a0boy with autism. \u201cThey said he just seems to not be able to calm down and, like, they would say, \u2018We can handle it but we just want to let you know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Holton\u2019s son is also non-verbal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She tried helping on her end by putting her son on ADHD medication.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSee if that could help him feel better in his skin and better in those situations of like the whole newness,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as the months went on, she said, he continued coming home with injuries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would have bruises on his ear and then in his right ear, behind his ear,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would be like total like shock, you know, and heartbreak.\u201d<\/p>\n

She trusted the staff at the school. So, she asked the boy\u2019s doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) to increase his medication. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Then in December, she received a call from Warwick Police about an investigation into abuse in her son\u2019s classroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A classroom aide had accused the teacher and educational aide of abusing and neglecting the classroom\u2019s four autistic children. They ranged from 5- to 8-years-old.<\/p>\n

Police didn\u2019t file criminal charges. But a federally authorized investigation from Disability Rights Pennsylvania found the aide’s allegations to be “credible” and “corroborated.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u00a0referring to the aide’s allegation noted in both state reports.<\/p>\n

Holton says she didn\u2019t know the full extent of what happened in the classroom until she got a call from the school district in the spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Special Ed supervisor called me and said that he was restrained 3,193 times,\u201d she said, her voice breaking.<\/p>\n

That was over the course of four months.<\/p>\n

“I remember, like, catching my breath and saying, \u2018Wait, you mean minutes, minutes?\u2019 and she said, \u2018No, times,'” Holton said .<\/p>\n

The son of school board member James Pepper was in the same classroom.<\/p>\n

“They were so completely and utterly failed,” Pepper said in an August board meeting.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In total, the Central Bucks School District reported more than 6,400 restraints for the 2024-25 school year. That\u2019s nearly a quarter of the total number of restraints reported statewide last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSix thousand is alarming,\u201d Pennsylvania Department of Education Secretary Carrie Rowe said in an interview with the NBC10 Investigators. \u201cSomething has to be going wrong and additional oversight is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowe said the state has begun \u201ctargeted monitoring\u201d with Central Bucks and are determining \u201cwhere the gaps are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be wrong for us to think that this is just a problem of Central Bucks,\u201d said Margie Wakelin, a lawyer with the Education Law Center whose work includes representing families of children who have been restrained.<\/p>\n

Wakelin isn’t involved in the Central Bucks situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really hope that the state will recognize that oversight is necessary, particularly related to the use of restraints,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The NBC10 investigators obtained exclusive information that shows how many times kids have been restrained in Pennsylvania schools.<\/p>\n

It shows the use of restraints has gone up drastically in Southeastern Pennsylvania – nearly tripling in the last four years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a crisis that needs intervention immediately,\u201d Wakelin said.<\/p>\n

About a fifth of Pennsylvania students have disabilities — ranging from dyslexia to autism.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Schools have 30 days to report an instance to the state.<\/p>\n

Rowe says when her department sees an increase at a district,\u00a0 it starts asking questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre 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,\u201d she said. \u201cEvery time we see these types of increases, or even if a specific restraint is of concern to us, we’re going into that school.”<\/p>\n

The department later told the NBC10 Investigators that other than Central Bucks School District, it has only officially intervened in one other school.<\/p>\n

Back in Bucks, Holton\u2019s son is currently out of school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He finished the 2024-25 school year in the classroom, following the firing of some of the staff in the classroom and administrators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was supposed to start at a private\u00a0school 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHere 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,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u201cinvolve ongoing legal proceedings, which the district cannot address for privacy and legal reasons.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Central Bucks School Board fired the superintendent and several administrators in response to the abuse investigations and reports.<\/p>\n

The district spokesperson said that Central Bucks ensures all training and certification standards are met for staff who work with students with disabilities.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JoAnna Holton\u2019s son struggled with his new school environment when he started Kindergarten at Jamison Elementary School in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12223,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-16827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-nbc10-investigators","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}