Kindergartner Malik Evans, a nonverbal boy with autism, wouldn’t sit still in his classroom at Mno Grant Elementary School in fall 2012, so his teacher repeatedly wound a rubber strap around his legs, looped it through his chair and tied him to his seat, according to the lawyer who filed a lawsuit against the Antioch Unified School District. Restraining special education students is legal in dire emergencies, but this was abuse, the lawsuit charged. The district settled the case, which included seven other students in Malik’s class, for $8 million; the teacher pleaded guilty to a felony count of child abuse.
During a class excursion in March 2013, 5th-grader Andrew Ashline, a nonverbal boy with autism, epilepsy and an IQ of 47, was repeatedly told to stop touching the wheel of his special stroller, but he didn’t, according to a lawsuit filed against the Orange Unified School District. His teacher then pulled him out of the stroller and with the help of an aide, force-walked him to Palmyra Elementary School and held him facedown on the floor for 12 minutes, the lawsuit alleged. This restraint and others like it were punitive and illegal, the lawsuit charged. Orange Unified said it could not comment on pending litigation.
[For more of this story, written by Jane Meredith Adams and John C. Osborn, go to http://edsource.org/2015/littl...n/78040#.VTcLlCFVikp]
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