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NYS Ed. Dept. Seeks Approval for Schools to Electric Shock Disabled

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" ABU GHRAIB - COMING TO A SCHOOL HOUSE NEAR YOU "

NYS Ed. Dept. Seeks Approval for Schools for Aversives (including Electric

Shock) for Disabled Students "

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

The Special Education Muckraker

To sum things up 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

<http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com/specialreports.html> Medicaid

Provider Agreement can be found on my web site at: (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, 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

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:

We must stop this initiative dead in its tracks, and then move on to

severely limit the use of restraints in all NYS schools; eliminate the use

of time out/isolation rooms and prohibit the use of the vast majority, or

perhaps all, aversives, including electric shock and sprinkling liver powder

on food for starters. I do NOT care if a few parents, distraught because

nothing else has " worked, " are guided or effectively coerced into consenting

to such " treatments. " There are simply standards below which our

governments should not be permitted to sink. Ever.

So:

1. Please pass this e-mail, or any edited version of it, 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.

2. To be honest, I don't have the organizational skills and capabililties

to head up/coordinate what I hope will be a large-scale effort and I ask

that someone, some organization or group which can do so agrees to do so -

with the understanding that I am looking for an absolute prohibition on use

of aversives such as electric shock and liver powder sprinkled on food,

restraining autistic children in Rifton Chairs for hours on end and kids

being thrown into locked time out rooms without free, total access to

toilets and water at all times. If some group wants to negotiate and settle

for less than this - fuggedaboudit. I'm not interested in what's

politically " possible. " I intend to make the impossible possible by

changing the nature of the discourse entirely. Disabled kids who can't

speak for themselves do not need adults to negotiate their rights away, so

that they only experience torture ... sometimes.

3. We will need a good p.r./media campaign; obviously, someone or some

organization has to set this up and run it. The stories about the NYS

School for the Blind, and recent brouhaha re NYSED sending kids to the Judge

Rotenberg School, hit the media, and died a natural death. There are MANY

stories floating around NYS of little kids being locked into time out rooms

for hours on end in NYS regular, local public school districts and IEA's or

being beaten up by untrained public school " restrainers. " We need a

constant, increasing campaign, not a flurry re one horror story here; then

nothing; then a flurry of stories re another horror story there. They are

all over; they are consistent; they need to be exposed as such. Talk to your

media contacts and p.r.-savvy folks to see if anyone or any group will take

this project on, pro bono. Let me know if you find a " taker. "

4. I need to be able to consult with at least one attorney who is an

expert on international conventions and treaties against torture, cruel and

inhumane treatment, etc. to see if any proceedings can be instituted, at the

national or international level, to have this abuse declared impermissible

and to insure that those who do it, as well as those who approve it, are

held accountable before some duly-constituted court of law or legal

authority.

5. At a minimum, no matter what, I am going to do a passive civil

disobediance campaign, demonstrating in protest at NYSED's HQ and perhaps at

some of the places where this kind of torture is already taking place, or

will take place if these regulations are passed.

Talk to your friends and family. If you can't contenance our government

doing this, consider joining me. Jail could be a respite! And at least

your conscience will be clean, knowing that you did all that you could to

stop this. We are not Good Germans. We can't say " I didn't know. " We

can't let schools, districts, IEA's, etc. get away with torture by saying

that they were " just following orders. " In this case, the " orders " would be

kids' IEP's; the authorizers would be little district IEP Teams and the NYS

Education Department. We can't allow our government to torture " defective "

children. This is not Germany. This is not 1940. And torturing disabled

children is no more morally conscionable now than it was then.

It's got to be stopped - here. And now. Join me. Or start your own

campaign.

Do not do nothing. Dee Alpert, Publisher

The Special Education Muckraker

http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com

<http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com/>

Pat

R. Schissel, President

AHA/AS/PDD

Phone/Fax

PatS@...

www.aha-as-pdd.org

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