Here & Now

Abigail Swetz and Tim Peerenboom on Restraining Students

Frederica Freyberg:

Last week, we spoke with a civil rights lawyer about new data that shows thousands of instances of grade school children with disabilities being secluded and restrained in Wisconsin schools in the last academic year. Attorney Jeff Spitzer-Resnick called the practices abusive and said the Department of Public Instruction’s response has been inadequate. Tonight we hear from Abigail Swetz, DPI communications director, and Tim Peerenboom, a school psychologist and DPI education consultant. Thanks to both of you for being here.

Abigail Swetz:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to go first to you, Abigail. The recent DPI data release doesn’t name individual schools that are using seclusion and restraint. As a parent, could I find out if my child’s school was using these techniques? And if not, why not?

Abigail Swetz:

It’s a great question. The first thing to keep in mind about this is we’ve been collecting this data for three years and the law requires to us collect it and we decide to put it into a report and make that public. There are download files on our website that go into more detail than the report does.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so —

Abigail Swetz:

And I believe Tim has spoken to others about how we are able to show that information at a more granular level.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so as a parent, I could seek that out?

Abigail Swetz:

Yes.

Frederica Freyberg:

Tim, we know that seclusion and restraint is to be used as a last resort, according to DPI, and only in cases of imminent danger. But why is it at all?

Tim Peerenboom:

Well, for a couple of reasons. If there is imminent danger of physical harm to the student or the student’s classmates or anyone, that it sometimes, unfortunately, is necessary. So one way to think about it, why use it at all, is that in those moments, you might need to use physical restraint and that balancing test or the question is, is the risk of not doing a seclusion or not doing a restraint going to cause more harm than doing a physical restraint? So, for example, a student about to dart into heavy traffic. Not restraining that student from doing that could cause much more harm than actually restraining the student. Students being in a violent physical fistfight, not physically restraining a student could cause, would cause more harm than engaging in a physical restraint so why do it? The answer is to prevent further harm or prevent these intense, traumatic, dangerous situations from escalating and getting even worse.

Frederica Freyberg:

Abigail, why do some schools use it and others don’t? I mean, can DPI learn from schools that don’t engage in seclusion and restraint about what they do instead?

Abigail Swetz:

There are a lot of schools. The majority of our schools, actually, are not using this last resort because we don’t have to get to that point and there absolutely are lessons that we are learning about the structures and systems that we need to put into schools to make sure that they are trauma-informed and able to never reach this last resort. And also we’ve learned so much about the staffing that’s needed in that space and it’s one of the reasons we’ve been talking so much about trying to make sure we have the mental health supports we need for our students in our schools. I’ll just reiterate what Tim just said as well, that because this is a last resort, everything you do long before is so, so important. And also what you do after. We’ve also been learning so much about what happens after. What are these restorative conversations and how can we learn going forward?

Frederica Freyberg:

Tim, what does the DPI do with this data?

Tim Peerenboom:

The law doesn’t say we have to publish the data or doesn’t direct us to do anything with it, so when this all went into effect, we have a workgroup, a team that works on how do we want to address what we refer to as sort of outlier school districts — or schools, excuse me, schools that have a higher number of seclusion and restraint so when we get those in response, when we review the data that we get each year, we directly contact those schools who have higher numbers and work with them to identify the root cause of what’s causing those higher numbers and provide coaching, technical assistance, training to help reduce those numbers.

Frederica Freyberg:

To that end, Abigail, in a perfect world, what kind of staffing and training resources would be needed in schools so that seclusion and restraint were not necessary in a major kind of way?

Abigail Swetz:

This is the good news. We know what can work. We know that the trauma-informed work that we’ve been doing at DPI to try and get those kinds of systems and supports into schools, we know that makes a difference. We know that having student services staff, like school social workers, like school psychologists, like Tim in our schools makes such a huge difference and professional development for really every, every aspect of the school, every school staff from school nutrition all the way to administrators. I was a special education assistant and also a general classroom teacher and all of these roles need that professional development and we know that works and that is why we need to make sure we get the funding to support that work.

Frederica Freyberg:

Absolutely. All right. We want to thank you, Abigail Swetz and Tim Peerenboom from DPI for joining us on this. Thank you.

Abigail Swetz:

Thank you.

Tim Peerenboom:

Thanks for having us.