As AG, Kamala Harris took action against special education schools that were using restraints

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Rabbi Ruti Regan 🏳️‍🌈 🗳 🇺🇸 @RutiRegan 18h
...As AG, @KamalaHarris took action against private special education schools that were using restraints and seclusion to punish students.

June 9, 2016

Discipline in private special education schools under investigation by California attorney general

California Attorney General Kamala Harris has launched an investigation into the use of harsh discipline – including physical restraints and isolation – on students with disabilities who attend publicly funded private special education schools, EdSource has learned.

The Attorney General’s Office has issued at least one subpoena seeking documents related to “the use of restraints, seclusion or punishment at Tobinworld,” which operates six private special education schools in California, in “the matter of the investigation of nonpublic schools.” “Nonpublic schools” is the technical term for private special education schools that receive district, state and federal funds to educate students that school districts say they cannot adequately serve...

“It can be difficult for private parties to bring cases,” said Susan Mizner, disability counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s why it’s so important we have a public prosecutor.”

The investigation is believed to be the first time that a state or federal prosecutor has scrutinized private schools that market themselves to school districts as experts in the behavior of students with emotional disorders, autism and intellectual disabilities.

According to data from the California Department of Education and analyzed by the watchdog group Disability Rights California, private special education schools report the state’s highest number of restraint and seclusion incidents, which involve physically restraining special education students or isolating them in rooms they can’t leave, known as seclusion. In 2011-12, the last year data were collected, 364 private schools educated about 2 percent of the special education students in California, but they filed 66 percent of the behavioral emergency reports, according to the education department. The reports document emergency procedures, the most common of which is the use of restraint and seclusion to control students. Under the California Education Code, restraint and seclusion are to be used only as measures of last resort when a student’s behavior poses a serious risk of harm to self or others.

read: https://edsource.org/2016/discipline-in-private-special-education-schools-under-investigation-by-california-attorney-general/565577


June 24, 2016

School police, special ed discipline and juvenile camps under investigation

California Attorney General Kamala Harris has announced five investigations across the state into the treatment of students and children by school police, juvenile hall staff, foster care agencies, child welfare departments and private special education school staff.

The investigations were listed this week on a new Bureau of Children’s Justice investigations website that also asked for “input and information from members of the public – both positive and negative” about the matters. The Bureau of Children’s Justice was created as a division of the attorney general’s office last year to remedy “accountability and enforcement gaps,” Harris said in a statement.

Under investigation, although not charged with wrongdoing, are the Stockton Unified School District Police Department; the San Diego County Probation Department and its juvenile halls and camps; the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services and its child abuse reporting practices; the San Bernardino County Department of Children and Family Services and its foster home placements; and private special education schools across the state and their discipline practices.

Many of the investigations have been underway for months and were made public in part to solicit new information. “I want to encourage members of the public to report information about these investigations to my office,” Harris said...

The investigation of the Stockton Unified School District Police Department began in December, when the Bureau for Children’s Justice contacted the department and expressed concern that school police officers were arresting students at high rates, including students under the age of 10, according to documents related to the investigation...

https://edsource.org/2016/school-police-special-ed-discipline-and-juvenile-camps-under-investigation/566142

related:

Letter the Attorney General sent to the state’s 58 counties on the day she announced the new bureau highlighted child abuse reporting, with a reminder to law enforcement and child protection that all substantiated reports of child abuse must be sent to Department of Justice.
http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/bcj/ag-letter-to-counties.pdf


California Attorney General Kamala Harris flanked by child advocates during Feb. 12, 2015 press conference announcing new Bureau of Children’s Justice.


watch:

[Andy823]

1. She has done a lot of good

things in her life, helping to make things better for others. She will make a great president.

[bigtree]

2. I find myself wondering if all AGs were this proactive

...and progressive.

I can see why those who oppose her sought to obscure these extraordinary efforts on behalf of the people of her state, particularly children, with so much nonfactual noise.

[mcar]

3. One of the reasons I get frustrated by people

disparaging her because of her service as CA AG. She did so many good things and really helped people.

"But she's a cop!!11" is such a silly, destructive argument.

[bigtree]

5. it's insidious

...such an allure for opposing campaigns, that these diversions from fact and truth get picked up and used as political cudgels, no matter the source.

But the frustrating thing, as you say, is the good work that gets obscured, and not just at Kamala's expense, in this case. There's advocacy that longtime opponents of progressive change want to sabotage and discredit with these sing-song accusations and these flimsy, but politically adaptable charges.

[left-of-center2012]

4. Yet ...

She's polling in single digits?