Federal Investigation Alleges Prince William Staff Restrained Disabled Students Too Frequently

Following an 18-month investigation into alleged discrimination against students with disabilities, Prince William’s PACE schools have entered into an agreement to address concerns about the frequency with which restraint techniques are used.

According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, students at PACE West in Gainesville and PACE East at Independent Hill were denied “a free appropriate public education” because schools were “failing to re-evaluate students to determine if they needed additional or different related aids or services.”

“The frequent use of these restrictive interventions suggests these strategies are not effective at changing or minimizing the problematic behavior,” the findings said.

The investigation began after a Nov. 2012 complaint filed by the Legal Aid Justice Center on behalf of the mother of a young teenage student with disabilities at PACE East. The student was allegedly placed in a seclusion room for hours at a time multiple times and subjected to facedown physical restraints on six occasions.

“Physical restraint and seclusion should never be the default answer to misbehavior, but only used as a last resort in a true emergency,” said Angela A. Ciolfi, legal director of the JustChildren Program at Virginia’s Legal Aid Justice Center, in a news release. “To allow a student to be repeatedly subjected to these traumatizing interventions is to ignore clear red flags that the student’s educational plan is not working and needs to be revised.”

The mother of the student said she hoped the findings would help other families who might not know their rights.

“As a mother, I am very happy with the OCR decision, knowing that other children will not have to go through what we did,” the statement read.

The report said there was no evidence students were physically injured by the use of restraint and seclusion. An investigation concluded that the techniques denied students with disabilities a free appropriate public education as required by law, the Washington Post reports.

In response, the 10-page report included a resolution requiring Prince William to review records of students who were secluded, restrained or placed in a “reorientation area” more than once during the past two school years. The report also calls for compensatory services, staff training and increased instruction when students are removed from classes.

The case was resolved last week and the agreement is set to go into effect, The Washington Post reports.

The PACE schools collectively enroll about 200 students. At PACE West, school logs showed that more than half the student body was placed in the reorientation area each month from 2012 to 2013. Students reportedly spent a collective 713 hours, 44 minutes in seclusion or restraint, or 10.6 hours each on average.