This story is second in a series about the use of physical behavior-control methods on school children. Your feedback is welcomed at dialeditor@boscobeldial.net
On a recent Thursday afternoon, Skyler Reynolds squatted in a hallway at Bluff View Intermediate School in Prairie du Chien.
A boy, 11 or 12, sprawled on the floor next to him looking both tired and upset.
“Can you work with me on this?” Reynolds addressed the boy. “I was really impressed earlier when you went out with your class for gym. Can we get some of that back?”
Snatches of encouraging conversation like this one, overheard during a tour of the school, are not uncommon according to Reynolds, who serves on the special education team at Bluff View, which houses grades three through eight in the district.
Reynolds is the director of the school’s “Intervention Center.” Unlike an old-fashioned detention room, this space functions more like a break room—it’s a place where students can go any time they feel upset or just need a moment of respite.
“They don’t get in trouble for getting upset,” Reynolds explained. “If they need to destress, they come down, have a quick conversation maybe play a game, and head back to class,” he said. “It’s a great life lesson for a student to learn when they’re upset and what to do about it, instead of someone else dictating what they do.”
New direction The philosophy and practice of Reynolds and his team are a sharp departure from how things were done in the past at Bluff View.
In early September, the Dial published statistics released by the Wisconsin Department of Instruction (DPI) about rates of “seclusion” and “restraint” incidents in Wisconsin public schools.
Educators define “seclusion” as forcing a child into isolation against his or her will; “restraint” is when staff physically detain a student.
Seclusion is being broadly phased out—it’s ineffective, traumatizing, and actually worsens behavior problems instead of solving them. The U.S. Attorney General has launched a series of investigations into districts that utilize the practice to an extreme degree.
Restraint, on the other hand, can be necessary to save a life or prevent severe injury, for instance, if a child runs into a busy street or threatens harm to himself or another.
In practice, however, many educators have, and still do, use both seclusion and restraint as punishment and as a curb to bad behavior. Overwhelmingly, the victims of such punishment are younger elementary aged boys with a disability, according to disability rights activists. Autism is overrepresented in the group.
The DPI statistics are, in fact, designed in part by the Wisconsin legislature to identify schools that have a problem with overuse of these techniques.
Such schools are easily identified in the data as institutions where a small number of students are either secluded, restrained, or both, dozens of times during a school year. In such cases, advocates say, the techniques are being used not to prevent serious harm, but as a routine attempt to control behavior, which is ineffective, counterproductive, and a violation of the students’ civil rights.
In the 2021/2022 school year, the last year of data released by the DPI, Bluff View placed in the top three schools in the southwest region for seclusion usage, and at the top very of the list for restraint.
Six students were secluded fourteen times at the school; seven students were restrained twenty-two times. It’s likely, though not proven by the data, that there’s overlap among those groups of students.
When the Dial published these numbers, Principal Tomi Gebhard reached out to offer us a tour of the institution.
“It’s not that way anymore,” she said. “We could easily serve as a model for other schools. We’ve changed our entire approach.”
In the 2022-2023 school year, Bluff View recorded zero instances of seclusion and restraint.
New training
So what changed? For starters, according to Gebhard, staff turnover. No one was forced out, she said, but natural attrition changed the makeup of the team. At the same time, she launched a school-wide effort to focus on improving the social skills and mental health of students.
Andy Banasik, who serves as District Administrator and Athletic Director, said one impetus for the change was the shutdown during the pandemic.
“They missed a whole year of face to face. They all had been using the phone or using the computer. We know we lost the academic skills, but the biggest loss was just, ‘How do we socialize with each other again?’” To launch that effort, Gebhard brought in new training at the school: Non-Violent Crisis Intervention (NVCI). While NVCI includes training in safe holds for when restraint is necessary, that’s not the main focus of the method. The idea is to catch behavior upstream—before it precipitates a crisis.
“If a kid is angry, let’s say, you can either pour gas on the fire, or you can de-escalate long before that happens,” explained Jim Nelson. He trains educators in NVCI for the southwest region of the state, known as Cooperative Educational Service Agency 3 (CESA3).
“De-escalation begins the minute you meet the student,” Nelson said. “Relationships come before academics. By building stronger relationships, you decrease the anxiety in the classroom. Students need to know that it’s a safe place to be.”
At Bluff View, only the administrators are trained in proper restraint holds, to be used as “a last resort,” according to Gebhard. Everyone else, however, gets de-escalation training.
A key underlying principle of NVCI is that students are treated, not as pawns controlled by threats and punishments, but as rich and complicated humans with feelings—feelings that they are only just learning to manage and regulate.
To that end, in addition to the Intervention Center, several “sensory rooms,” furnished with comfortable chairs and lit with soft light are located throughout the school.
“These are areas where students can go in to reset,” explained Gebhard. “If they need a moment to just kind of collect themselves.”
Vitally, students use these spaces voluntarily. They are situated where staff are nearby, but the idea is for the children to learn young how to care for themselves and get what they need.
Gebhard pointed to a variety of other changes implemented at the school as supporting the new philosophy: The school has incorporated “social emotional learning” into its everyday curriculum— learning techniques, for example, for making sure they know when they’re starting to get upset.
The school has also added staff, including a Board Certified Behavior Analyst, trained to support students and staff in finding solutions for problem behavior, as well as a Behavior Specialist on call during the day to assist students who need extra support, for example, during transition times.
Law is working
Two other local schools also placed high in the data rankings: The 4K Neal Wilkins Early Learning Center in Platteville and New Frontier Academy in Prairie du Chien, a private school that uses taxpayer dollars through the school choice program.
The Dial reached out to both institutions requesting interviews and records under the open records laws.
At New Frontier Academy, 12 students, all with disabilities, were restrained a total of 57 times. The administration declined to comment and asserted that, even though they receive public funding, as a private school they don’t have to comply with public records requests.
At Neal Wilkins, five students with disabilities were secluded a total of 30 times, and five disabled students were restrained 20 times. (Because of vagueness in the data reporting law, there’s no way to confirm if the data refers to the same five students.)
Dr. Maxwell Long, Student Services Director for the Platteville School District, declined to discuss the school record, citing privacy concerns for students.
Long did release data for the 2022-2023 school year that showed a decrease at Neal Wilkins to four incidents of seclusion and two of restraint.
At Platteville’s Westview Elementary School, however, the data suggests a systematic misuse of the techniques of seclusion and restraint. There, seven students (six with disabilities) were secluded 20 times and restrained 17. (Again, the data does not show whether it was the same seven students.)
Still, disability rights groups count the data reporting as a win. Tammy Jackson serves as a public policy analyst at the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities.
She said the difference between districts like Prairie du Chien, which show improvement, and districts like Platteville, that show a pattern of misuse, can often be explained by differences in school culture.
“The law is not necessarily going to change a culture,” she said. “If you have a school district that shows high numbers, that can translate into what might feel normal and acceptable in that district. But if you have a district where staff says, ‘We have high numbers. What are we doing?’ and wants to rethink it and reorient themselves— then I think you see that change.”
