Disproportionate representation of Black and special education students
CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids Community School District will see more than 200 instances of physical restraint of students in the 2023-24 school year and an increase in out-of-school suspensions beginning in the 2022-23 school year, according to new data presented to the school board this week.
Among those restrained, black students and those with individualized education plans, legal documents created for students who receive special education services, were overrepresented, said Sandy Schmitz, the district’s executive director of behavioral support.
The district has been working to improve its practices since signing a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2022, which required the district to end the use of segregation for students in all school buildings and programs. Segregation rooms are used by many school districts as a last resort when a student is at risk of harming themselves or others.
The agreement also requires the district to make significant changes to limit its use of physical restraints and rethink how it analyzes and responds to student behavior, but Schmitz said the 200 incidents of physical restraint don’t compare to last school year because officials are still learning the new techniques.
The Justice Department set a deadline of June 30, 2026, for the agreement to be reached, at which point the district would have to implement those practices.
According to data presented to the school board on Monday, kindergarten had more restraints than any other grade level. Schmitz said this isn’t surprising because kindergarten is a big transition for kids, especially those who didn’t attend kindergarten. Students in kindergarten through fifth grade accounted for 62 percent of all physical restraints, according to the data.
Washington High School had the highest number of restraints with 24, followed by Jefferson High School with 20. Other schools with more than 10 restraints during the school year were Cedar River Academy, Johnson STEAM Academy, Cleveland Elementary, Van Buren Elementary, Pierce Elementary, Roosevelt Creative Corridor Business Academy, Franklin Middle School and Kenwood Leadership Academy.
Schools without restrictions included Metro High School, City View Community High School, Truman Early Learning Center and Madison Elementary School.
Other district schools, which were not named, had 10 or fewer restraint devices.
Schmitz also said black students are disproportionately represented among those suspended in Cedar Rapids schools.
In the 2022-23 school year, there were 611 out-of-school suspensions across all grade levels in the district. Since then, the number of suspensions in elementary schools has increased more than nine-fold, the number of suspensions in middle schools has increased more than five-fold and the number of suspensions in high schools has increased almost four-fold, Schmitz said.
Last year, the Cedar Rapids School Board approved new policies required in a settlement with the Department of Justice, including crisis intervention protocols outlining positive interactions and crisis prevention and de-escalation techniques that should be used to prevent and, when necessary, respond to students with behavioral problems.
In each school, only a few staff members who are part of the “safety teams” that respond to student behavioral crises on school premises are trained in mental restraint techniques in accordance with the National Programme on Crisis Intervention.
According to school district policy, physical restraints can only be used when a student is engaging in behavior that poses an immediate and imminent risk of injury to themselves or others.
The Department of Justice opened an investigation into the use of physical restraints and seclusion in Cedar Rapids schools in October 2020. The investigation concluded that instead of meeting the needs of students with behavioral disabilities, the district restrained them through unnecessary restraints and inappropriate confinement to small seclusion rooms, sometimes multiple times a day and often for long periods of time, causing some students to lose hundreds of hours of instructional time.
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