Just a quick reminder of my experiences. I was a Behavior Disorder teacher in Burlington, Columbus, OH, and Des Moines, a Behavior Interventionist in a MS in Des Moines, building principal at the MS and HS level, Secondary Education Services Director, AEA Special Education Director, and am now the Special Education Director for a large urban district in Iowa. I want to talk to you today about a proposed bill in the Iowa legislature (Senate File 2360 https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ga=88&ba=S-5019) and why I am passionately against this legislation and believe my extensive experience in this arena allows me a unique perspective.
I want to share a little research that I’ve been looking up on this bill and kind of what it looks like in the final version. To be honest with you, this is something that I spoke out quite a bit about when it was first proposed and when the COVID crisis happened I was kind of hoping that maybe it would be shelved for a year. Instead, it has actually made it through the new funnel date and looks to have enough support to be likely to pass.
Basically, the essence of this bill has three components. One of those has to do with creating therapeutic classrooms for students with significant behaviors in the classroom. These students would go to a place called a therapeutic classroom that would be away from their peers. One interesting thing is that the therapeutic classrooms will have a 1.5 additional weighting for each student who goes to that classroom. For someone who has spent a lot of time trying to improve the effectiveness of these kind of classrooms and trying to reduce the need for the use of separate classrooms for kids with behaviors, the cost of a program like this that’s well-run can be anywhere from $150 a day per student to $500 a day per student. The idea that that you can run a therapeutic class that would be of any effectiveness for $52 a day (which, by the way, the statue has capped at one point five million dollars for the entire state) is silly thinking at best.
Another big piece of this legislation is putting parameters around something called room clears. For those of you who are not in the education business you may not understand what this is, but a room clear is when a student becomes so destructive or so dangerous that we remove the other students from the classroom until that student can be safely removed. There’s a reason why this has gotten kind of a bad rap and pieces of those concerns are very legitimate. We should not be doing multiple rooms clears a day for the same student. Not only is this student struggling with learning but now everybody else in the class is struggling because instruction is being interrupted multiple times per day. There is trauma involved not only for the student who is exhibiting the behaviors but for the staff person and the other kids. It is not something that was ever designed to be used multiple times a day and I think there is some confusion around how best to reduce the misuses of this and it is not this law.
I remember when I first became a special ed director at a district and one of the first things that I heard was that there was a situation at one of our elementary schools. I went over there and the first grade teacher was crying. It was 11 in the morning and they had done a room clear six different times for the same student that day. The student was really struggling and he was pretty much destroying the classroom, knocking everything over and ripping things up in the classroom. There were people around gathering data on clipboards because the student was in the evaluation process for special education. The other students were in the library and the teacher said this had been going on all week. As the Special Ed Director for that district I said this is not okay. We are not going to do this, it is not okay for anyone involved so we’re going to meet and we’re going to come up with a new plan. Sometimes I think there’s some confusion as to when an administrator can step into the room clear situation like that and say no, we need a new plan. This isn’t making any sense for anyone involved. It is kind of a “who is in charge/” situation. To me, that’s a leadership professional learning situation. I teach a class called What Every Administrator Needs to Know about Special Education and we talk a lot about these kind of situations. They are the person in the building to ensure the safety of all students so they are going to have to have a big voice and be more directive at times.
The other piece of this bill is teachers being allowed to put their hands on students more often. This is very confusing to me because the law already allows teachers to put their hands on students in Chapter 103 who are a danger to themselves or others and they won’t get in trouble if they do that as long as it’s reasonable. As I talked to people about this it sounds like there are some situations out there where maybe teachers are feeling like they have acted reasonably and within the law, and then they have been targeted and disciplined by the administration in their district. I can tell you from my own experience the times that I have had to address that kind of issue with a teacher I felt like the teacher did have a performance concern andwasn’t following what anybody would consider to be reasonable. In my opinion, if you’ve got an administrator that is going to target teachers and discipline them for something that is reasonable in scope and protected by law, this particular law is not going to change anything with that problem. That administrator will find somewhere else to target their employees in an unfair manner. This is not something we write a law around where we make physical restraint available to more staff members.
I don’t think teachers want to be able to put their hands on kids more readily. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years; a lot of people have been doing this for a lot of years; and I think most, if not all of us, would agree that when you have a student who is agitated, anxious, upset, or threatening violence, putting your hands on them puts not only the escalated child at risk but the staff person as well. I have yet to put my hands on a student who is agitated and have her/him calm down. You know when you make that decision it is for safety reasons and you know when you do it things are going to get worse before they get better. I don’t think that is what teachers want to be doing. I think teachers want to feel like they’re going to be supported when they do put their hands on kids and, again, this is already in the law.
I absolutely believe that teachers want students to behave in their classrooms, particularly not acting out in a way that makes the teacher and other students feel unsafe. They want student behavior to improve. This happens when students receive the support they need, not when we physically restrain them. For some students a classroom that is segregated from typical peers and provides intensive supports is what they need. For many students this ends up being a life sentence where their only role models are other students who also engage in significant behaviors and where the supports are woefully inadequate. Teachers want to make sure that their students have access to mental health services, healthcare, behavior supports in the building from well-trained staff members, financial support and time to provide necessary academic interventions, home and food security, support for their families, and hope. They want effective professional learning that will increase their skills in working with students with challenging behaviors. They are not asking for a law that allows them to restrain students, I just don’t believe that to be true.
Some of the things that I’m going to say next are potentially going to make some people mad, maybe a lot of people mad. Again, I’m 56 years old with over 30 years in this business and another thing that I have learned for sure is that if nobody’s mad, nothing is changing. We are at a point in our society and culture right now where we are saying difficult things, we are saying things that we haven’t ever said before to each other, and so this is the time to be disruptive. If I fear making people mad, nothing will change.
I believe this bill is a racist bill and it is a frightening example of why I don’t trust that real change will happen. I want you to do something for me. I’m going to be transparent and vulnerable and be honest with you about what I see in this situation. I want you to think about the student who is threatening a teacher, threatening another student, very out of control in a classroom, and people in the room feel fearful of the situation. When I close my eyes and I put myself in that situation the student that I’m picturing is black. I’m going to guess that if we were all honest with each other that there would be a lot of people out there who see the same thing. Implicit bias is there whether we want to admit it or not. This is not just about what we envisioned in our minds, this is about the reality for Black students and how that manifests itself into practice and outcomes.
According to the Office of Civil Rights (https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/school-climate-and-safety.pdf, https://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf)…
- Black children represent 18% of enrollment in pre-K and represent 48% of students who are suspended more than one time.
- Black students in K-12 are suspended at a rate three times higher than white students.
- Black students represent 16% of K-12 enrollment but represent 20% of students referred to law enforcement and 31% of the students arrested for something school related.
- Black children represent 19% of students with disabilities but represent 36% of students with disabilities who have been physically restrained.
- In Iowa, 21% of Black male students have been suspended vs. 4% of White students
- In Iowa 12% of Black female students have been suspended vs. 2% of White Students
This is the whole deal right now. George Floyd was murdered in a restraint. He died in a restraint and our state is proposing a bill; that appears to be something that is going to pass with bipartisan support; that will expand the use of physical restraint in our school. Imagine after all the conversation and activity and action and advocacy that we’ve had around this issue being a black student coming back to school. The first time that the student is either restrained or sees another black student being restrained that student will think they are going to die or the other student is going to die. This is a very reasonable fear for them. They know Black people die in physical restraints; they watched a video of a man being murdered in a restraint. This is very, very real to them.
This is a whole new ball game that we are responding to and the fact that we are going to respond to it in this manner is absolutely sickening to me. I know some of the reasoning behind this bill’s support. Teachers were asking for this so we need to give them something. Republicans were going to do a bill and if we wanted any input we had to support it. I don’t understand any of this. Again, if there’s one thing for sure we need to know is that you don’t compromise your way to equity. We do not compromise our way to equity! We don’t give and take on equity, that is where we have been and this is where it has gotten us. People screaming in the streets because even when they die nothing changes.
So here’s what I’m asking and what I believe our black students and families are asking as well. We need to have some understanding about the system that we have created for Black students in our schools and how that has led to the situation that has happened with so many Black people; where being Black means that you can be murdered by the system, discarded by the system, and never allowed access into the system.
Why are Black students angry in school? Black children are way more likely to be non-proficient readers than White students. In 2018 80% of Black 4th graders were non-proficient readers compared to 54% of White students. 87% of Black students were non-proficient in 8th grade as compared to 54% of White students. https://patch.com/us/across-america/two-thirds-u-s-4th-graders-are-not-proficient-reading) Whether this is about inadequate instruction, low expectations, or implicit bias, the bottom line is that our Black students are not being taught as effectively as our White students. I believe that Black students are disciplined for behavior that White students are not disciplined for way too often. The racism that is so prevalent in many of our education systems leaves Black children and families feeling dehumanized, which often leads to anger. Many have experienced trauma, both outside and inside of school, that impacts behavior.
Then we need to take into account the trauma many have experienced this spring and what that’s going to bring to schools and classrooms when we return. How are we going to respond?
I used to think; unfortunately not that long ago; that we need to bring Black people to our table so that they can have a voice. It’s not our table, right? It’s not our table and we need to be invited to their table, which is a privilege to be asked. What I see happening is we go to their table, we have the conversation, we do the self-reflection, we say the right things, we read the right books, we put the stuff on social media, and then afterwards, when we’re headed home, then it’s like what’s that table over there? That table has great drinks, nice desserts, big cigars, you know, stuff I like. I’m just going to stop by that table, you know. And, then I’m staying at that table (I’m going to call this the table of racism). By the way, there are only White people at this table. And that’s where things like this bill get written. We create crappy ideas like this when our perspective is so limited that we don’t even know the impact of the decisions we are making. The Table of Racism is no longer a place we can sit. I don’t care if that table gives you votes, or money, or prestige, or influence; don’t sit at that table ever again.
This is what I believe we need our legislators to do with this situation. We need legislators to take the same conviction, the same passion, the same courage, the same Black Lives Matter gear they take to the protest and take it all to the legislative floor. With that same conviction, with that same compassion, with that same commitment to change, legislators need to vote no on this bill.
If that does not happen, the result of this bill will be that trauma for Black children and families will be even more increased, Black students will be removed from school at an even higher rate than we currently do with suspensions and expulsions and we’re going to feel good about it because it will be called a “therapeutic classroom”. We are going to put even more Black students in a classroom in another place so they’re not even in the regular school. We will have more Black students arrested at school. That is the result. Our reality will not get better, and will actually get worse if we don’t show some courage and true willingness to change.
I believe that Black people in Iowa have given us a tremendously generous opportunity to work together. We cannot turn our backs and speak one way while continuing to support racist policies and practices. We have to do better and this is the time.