Feb. 3—FARGO — A review of Fargo Public Schools’ use of physical restraint on students with disabilities has yielded a long list of correctional steps under an agreement with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education.

The department aimed to determine whether the use of restraint and seclusion denied students with disabilities a free appropriate public education, which would violate federal laws protecting people from discrimination based on disability.

It ultimately found the use of repeated restraints on some students put the district in violation of those laws.

A 43-page report from the Office for Civil Rights outlined a number of shortcomings in how the school district administers, evaluates and keeps record of those restraints.

However, the district maintains much of what’s in the agreement already has or is being remedied through its ongoing improvement efforts.

“While there’s a lot here … there aren’t necessarily a lot of significant changes that will occur because we’ve made them all already,” said Tara Brandner, general counsel for Fargo Public Schools.

Brenda Ruehl, director of advocacy services at the North Dakota Protection and Advocacy Project, said the use of restraints in schools is a statewide and nationwide issue.

She said she’s pleased to see the Fargo district is addressing it.

“If the district adheres to the agreement and does what OCR tells them, actually mandates them to do now, I think there will be significant improvement for children with disabilities,” Ruehl said.

The examination of Fargo Public Schools began in January 2019

after the Department of Education chose one school district in each state for review.

The OCR reviewed records for Fargo students reported to have been restrained during the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic years.

Behaviors triggering a restraint could include kicking, hitting, biting or charging at other students and staff, and other unsafe behavior such as climbing on and throwing furniture.

The district’s restraint policy, modified in 2018, states restraint is only justified to protect students or staff from imminent physical injury.

For 2017-18, records indicated 86 students were involved in a total of 376 incidences of restraint.

For 2018-19, records showed 88 students were involved in 326 restraints.

Since then, the use of restraints has decreased, with the district reporting 199 and 170 restraints, respectively, in each of the last two school years.

Patty Cummings, director of compliance, attributes the decrease to several actions, including continued staff training and crisis intervention methods.

The Ukeru system involves de-escalation of a student’s behavior with verbal and nonverbal communication, and if needed, using blocking techniques with pads to protect both the student and staff.

Begun as a pilot program in 2018 at a handful of schools, the Ukeru system is now the default method of crisis intervention in the Fargo district.

For its review, the Office of Civil Rights conducted in-person visits in October 2019 to 10 elementary, middle and high schools in Fargo.

Representatives interviewed dozens of staff members, including the superintendent and director of special education, school principals, special education teachers, paraprofessionals, case managers, counselors and positive behavior interventionists.

They also met with more than 30 parents and community members, the agreement states.

Of the 376 reported student restraints in the 2017-18 school year, 373 occurred at the elementary level, two at the middle school level and one at the high school level.

Kennedy Elementary accounted for the most restraints, with a total of 104, followed by Ed Clapp Elementary with 72 restraints and Washington Elementary with 64, the school district reported.

It also noted that Kennedy and Washington operate special programs for students with behavioral issues.

The report outlined the district’s specific shortcomings related to use of restraints, including:

* Failing to implement parts of some students’ Individual Education Plans, or IEPs, aimed at preventing escalating behavior.

* Incidences of employees not trained in nonviolent crisis intervention administering restraints on students.

* Failing to complete and reevaluate some restraint reports in a timely manner.

Ruehl said for most special education students, their IEP lists the child’s triggers and how to work through them.

Missed triggers can lead needlessly to escalated behavior, she said.

After a child is restrained, their IEP team should convene promptly to determine what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.

Ruehl said there hasn’t previously been a strong accountability system in the district for uniform followup.

“If they got the restraint report, they didn’t seem to do anything with them,” she said, leading to the same children being repeatedly restrained.

The report also said the district relies too heavily on school resource officers, or SROs, to deal with problematic student behaviors.

Because SROs are not district employees and not required to complete restraint reports, incidences of restraint are likely underreported, the report concluded.

However, school district employees denied relying on SROs to handle the most challenging student behavior, the report said.

The Office of Civil Rights said it investigated one incident the district reported as seclusion, as well as several others that may have constituted seclusion but were not reported as such.

It defines seclusion, used to deal with behavioral issues, as involuntary confinement of a student in a room or area, with or without adult supervision.

Fargo Public Schools spokesperson AnnMarie Campbell said the district does not use seclusion in its schools.

The district has “calming” rooms or spaces in some of the schools for when a student needs to wind down from an escalation.

However, only a handful of the schools maintained logs documenting when the rooms were used and by whom, the OCR said.

In the OCR meetings, several parents said they believed the district regularly secluded students with disabilities despite its policy prohibiting the practice.

One parent noted that if there is no doorknob on the inside of the room so that a student could not leave, that amounts to seclusion, the report said.

The Office of Civil Rights also investigated individual complaints relating to two students filed with the school district after its review began. No details of those cases are listed in the resolution, as that information has been redacted.

Fargo Public Schools faced legal action in December 2020 over its handling of a special education student.

Katy Barnum, parent of a then 8-year-old boy with autism,

filed a federal lawsuit claiming the district failed to provide her son with the education he was entitled to under federal law.

She said he was restrained, secluded and consequently traumatized by district staff and later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Barnum was not seeking punitive damages but wanted her child moved back to Madison Elementary, where he had been receiving support for high-functioning autism.

She and the school district reached a settlement in the case in November 2021 after the parties worked collaboratively to resolve the issues, Campbell said.

The Office of Civil Rights concluded that Fargo Public Schools denied students with disabilities a free appropriate public education when they were repeatedly restrained.

Students missed out on instruction and services when parents were asked to take them home early due to behavior.

Although school principals were instructed to end that practice, records indicated it continued when staff were not able to consistently manage a student’s behavior, the report said.

The report also stated Fargo Public Schools normalized the use of restraint without adequately considering long-term consequences on impacted students.

Several students who were repeatedly restrained were diagnosed with PTSD but were not reevaluated to address the additional diagnosis, the report said.

As a result, the Office for Civil Rights said Fargo Public Schools must provide compensatory education to those students. Cummings said that could occur before or after the regular school day and could be provided by internal staff or an outside service provider.

Brandner said that due to the length of the review, a number of the students referenced are no longer in Fargo Public Schools because they moved or graduated.

Other required steps include holding team IEP meetings, reviewing and revising restraint policies, providing effective training on those policies and developing a record-keeping system to ensure restraints are appropriately documented.

Aside from IEP meetings to be held this spring, Brandner said, the district has complied with all other requirements.

She called the situation a great opportunity for the district to continually evaluate its practices.

“We can always do better,” she said.