_Bunn_ / Flickr Charter schools use a range of practices to ensure only the “right” kind of students get in, Reuters reports. Those practices can include mandatory family interviews, long application processes and demands for Social Security cards and birth certificates. And they sometimes put charter schools in violation of state and federal law, Reuters reports. In Ohio, federal [...]
The Ohio Department of Education will open an investigation the Columbus school district’s use of seclusion rooms, the Columbus Dispatch reports. Seclusion rooms are enclosed spaces that are supposed to be used to calm or restrain children who become violent. The investigation was prompted by a formal complaint filed against Ohio’s largest school district by [...]
Ohio Public Radio’s Bill Cohen reports that just 500 students applied for special education vouchers this fall. The vouchers allow special education students to use public money — up to $20,000 — to pay for education at a school or program not operated by the school district they live in. Cohen says: Ohio is passing [...]
The state of Ohio should not regulate the use of seclusion and restraint in schools, dozens of school superintendents told the Ohio Department of Education. They say the requirements of current draft regulations are too expensive and unnecessary. In Ohio, no state law currently governs seclusion rooms, and the Ohio Department of Education has provided [...]
The Ohio Department of Education received more than 100 comments, letters and suggestions on how to improve a draft policy on seclusion and restraint in schools. Those suggestions ranged from recommending that Ohio prohibit the use of seclusion rooms entirely to requesting that Ohio not regulate the use of seclusion and restraint in schools at [...]
A disability rights group now says Ohio children may be hurt if the Department of Education fails to stop the use of seclusion in schools.
In a letter to the acting head of the Ohio Department of Education, Michael Sawyers, Disability Rights Ohio writes, “we are concerned that unless appropriate action is taken, students with disabilities will continue to be subjected to traumatic, potentially lethal practices.”
The ACLU of Ohio is asking the Ohio Department of Education to phase out the use of seclusion and restraint in Ohio schools by 2016. In the meanwhile, schools should have to report to the state how they use seclusion and restraint and give parents a way to file complaints if they believe seclusion or [...]
Tina M. Steele / Flickr Seclusion rooms are enclosed spaces that are supposed to be used to calm or restrain children who become violent. Seclusion — and restraint, or physical force used to control a child — are often used for children with disabilities. Seclusion and restraint are supposed to be used only in emergencies. But [...]
All schools will be required to track — and disclose — how often they are restraining or secluding children under a proposed state policy. But details about incidents, such as the reasons children are placed in seclusion rooms, would not be made public, according to a draft policy presented to a state Board of Education [...]
Columbus Dispatch visual journalist Courtney Hergesheimer traveled to schools around Ohio as part of StateImpact Ohio and The Dispatch’s reporting on the use of seclusion rooms in Ohio schools. Her video, narrated by Dispatch reporter Jennifer Smith Richards, shows what some of the seclusion rooms we visited look like. Some have tile floors; other have [...]
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