Black disabled students and disciplinary disparities

According to a study by the American Civil Liberties Union: Black students are more likely to experience all forms of discipline, from being removed from the classroom to being sent to the police. Black students with disabilities are substantially more likely than any other group to experience the most extreme forms of discipline, from losing classroom instructional time due to out-of-school suspension, to being punished through intentional physical pain in the many states where corporal punishment is still legal.

In A Blind Eye, we see how that plays out as Alyse tries to protect Rueben, her disabled child, from overzealous disciplinary measures masked as a ‘crisis management plan’ that provides approved methods to restrict and seclude Rueben with a ‘basket hold’: which allows for the immobilization of his limbs by an ‘trained practitioner’ of the technique, leading to his death.

Alise ponders the relative safety of home schooling for Black children in general, and more specifically for children with special needs.

read the ACLU findings here: https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/why-school-discipline-reform-still-matters

A Blind Eye: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Eye-David-Jackson-Ambrose/dp/1648902480

excerpt A BLIND EYE Chapter 41- Restraint:

She would have kept him home every day. Every morning, when he told her the kids said terrible, dreadful things. Laughing, pointing at him. She wanted to protect him. Kendall wanted him to be tough, resilient.

“He’s got to learn that living in this world with Black skin as your calling card doesn’t give you the privilege of hiding, staying home when it gets tough out there. This…this SYNDROME ain’t no harder than being born Black.”

Kendall said that, but his behavior showed that the problem was more than a desire to have his son stand strong in his identity. He was . ashamed of his son. He treated his child as an embarrassment, an aversion the same way those elementary school children whose mouths hurled vile, hateful things, and the faculty who pretended not to hear the hate assaulting her child day after day.

She learned to become someone else. She became Rueben’s warrior, but masked it behind the facade of a solicitous suburban mother. She wore flowered, pleated dresses with a bowed collar, paired with hite hosiery and tied her drab blonde hair with a ribbon, coiled it above her head and brushed out feathered  bangs. She wanted the faculty to like her. Didn’t want them see her as trailer trash with the Black husband. . . She baked cookies and cakes, gifts for new teachers. She conducted introductory orientations each new school year, where she instructed people on the specifics of Prader Willi Syndrome, and the special needs Rueben might require.

She grew tired of the repetitiveness. Of praying each year that the new teacher would be understanding, might have experience with special education and IEP’s. She knew better than to hope that anyone would have knowledge of PWS. But if they at least had familiarity with teaching kids with other special needs, at least they might be more predisposed to the extra work that would be involved.

By Rueben’s last year of elementary school, her script had become rote.

Hi I’d like to introduce you to my child he has PWS he loves school and loves the attention of his teachers praise goes a long way in keeping him focused He really loves english and story time math not so much He can become easily frustrated he used to have behavioral outbursts but not so much now but we must be vigilant in keeping him away from food it could kill him or at least make him very sick in fact, I will be willing to come to the school each day at lunch time to ensure that he is safe during a time that could be very dangerous to him if left unsupervised. He will be given a TSS worker but let’s be honest those people are not very reliable and there is high turnover for the position, so there will be many days where they are no shows,You must call me immediately when that happens so that I can try to give you, and Rueben, the support you need so as not to disrupt the classroom. He has been bullied. Terribly. And that has changed his demeanor. He used to be an outgoing child now he is surly and withdrawn and needs to feel the love and support of his teacher to draw out his loving nature. I know love is not a word that is customarily used in a school setting, can in fact lead to legal complications but I feel that stressing the importance of love is the most effective word in demonstrating what my child’s needs will be for the coming school year. He has been specifically targeted by student ____________. We have been in contact with both his parents and the police, but there has been very little intervention. Both parties seem to think ‘boys will be boys’ is sufficient explanation for the terrorism my child has endured year after year at the hands of this boy and his group of bullies. You are to keep my child away from ____________ at all costs. I have a video Rueben and I have prepared where he introduces himself to you and I’d like to play it for you now, before you actually meet him in person when classes begin.

She was there every afternoon, with Rueben’s meticulously packed lunch in hand, calories calculated with scientific precision. She pretended she didn’t see the judgement in their eyes, what they thought of her: overprotective, slovenly, bearer of defective children.

She told herself that the IEP created by the school, with its’ focus on behavior modification and the creation of a restraint plan, implemented when Rueben’s frustration with being denied food escalated to a physical manifestation had not been created because the faculty felt that addressing the needs of a Black child required a more hands-on intervention than it would had he been a white child. But given that Rueben was the only Black child with special needs at the school, and the only child of any race that had a restraint plan in place, while the other children who displayed physical aggression utilized the seclusion/de-escalation room, where sensory boards and light therapy strategies were used as part of an evidence based modality of crisis management instead of the basket hold and two-man supine restraint, it was difficult for her to convince herself otherwise.

Dear Mr. /Mrs. /Ms. ________________

. Here is a list of Rueben’s strengths and challenges

. Here is a list of things Rueben enjoys and/or does well

. Here are the things Rueben does not do so well/ what doesn’t work for Rueben

. Here is a list of things that signal Rueben is struggling/ possible triggers for escalation

. Here is a list of things that you (and Rueben) can do to help de-escalate him

Remember, behavior is a form of communication. When Rueben displays a ‘negative’ behavior, try to determine what he is trying to say, but lacks the capacity to verbalize in the moment. That will be the most effective way to keep any outburst to a minimum and will establish a bond with him that will be invaluable in the teacher/student relationship throughout the year.

Lastly:here is my contact information, please be sure to call me at any time that you need support or have questions (or need me to bring in a basket of muffins to help sate your overworked soul :-)

Gratefully Yours,

Alice Johnson

But they had never contacted her. The school board, with their Individual Evaluation Plan, their assigned Therapeutic Support Staff, their Behavioral Specialist, all felt they were most equipped in dealing with the challenges presented by her child.

Oh, sure, they had listened to her, valued her insight, documented everything she relayed at the ‘team’ meetings, but eventually they began to see her as overly involved, one of those ‘helicopter parents’, with her daily appearances and refusal to let her child ride to school on the short yellow bus that pulled up to her house each day. She was ashamed of that bus. The message it screamed with its’ loud, tacky color and lack of length. She would walk right past that bus, droning with the stilted communication efforts of its’ inhabitants, hustle Rueben into the Galant and drive him to the school herself.

When they finally deigned to phone her, it was to tell her of a dreadful mistake.

That was the word that rang in her ears long after she ended the call.

dreadful dreadful dreadful

The word droned in her head likea demon.

She was working a short shift at the hospital, picking up extra hours to pay down the mountain of neverending medical bills, when the call had come.

They had taken Rueben to a seclusion room. He had been ‘out of control’ they said. A child of his size, his girth, had required two staff to ‘escort’ him to a safer place, so that other children would not be harmed, traumatized by the violent display of anger he had erupted when confronted with stealing food from his classmates.

She had warned them, told them the most effective strategy would be that they not demand he return the food, not confront him in such a vigilante sort of way. Making a deal with him, requesting that he trade half of what he had taken, in exchange for something else of value, like five minutes free time on a video game, or quiet time with his favorite book, was the better strategy to de-escalate her child.

The behavior management plan designed by their PhD level expert instructed otherwise. A two person face down restraint had been deemed the most effective way of controlling Rueben in the event of a crisis. She had screamed at that word. Control. What did they mean by control? She had been told that physical restraint would only utilized as the method of last resort in crisis intervention. This was not crisis intervention, it was treatment failure, she screamed.

Why did her child need to be controlled, and the other children were given the tools by which they could regain control of themselves?

positional asphyxiation

She heard the despair in his voice beneath the veneer of professional courtesy. The dread.

An unfortunate mishap

Those were the words he used to tell her he was dead. During the scuffle to get him to the ground, where he would be safer, where he would be less likely to harm himself. During the scuffle, somehow legs had gotten tangled. Staff had fallen on him during the transition from upright to prone.

As he had continued to struggle, staff continued to apply the IEP approved restraint. After thirty minutes they turned him over to adjust his pants. Why had they needed to adjust his pants? How had this been deemed important?

He was not breathing. His heart had stopped. He was en route to the E.R.