Lawsuit Says Students With Disabilities Targeted by Alaska School District With Unlawful Use of Restraint, Seclusion Tactics

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The second-largest school district in Alaska and three elementary school staff members face a proposed class action lawsuit over the allegedly disproportionate use of “excessive and unjustified” restraint and seclusion methods on students with disabilities.

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The 38-page lawsuit claims that despite its own policies and state and federal law, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District (MSBSD) has “systematically” discriminated against students with disabilities by relying on restraint and seclusion as routine disciplinary tools. The filing alleges the school district uses these techniques without first attempting less restrictive behavioral interventions and even if a student’s actions pose no imminent threat to themselves or others.

“The District treats its vulnerable students like incarcerated criminals by using these demeaning and ineffectual practices to silence, detain, isolate, control, and punish students who have behavioral challenges as a manifestation of their disabilities,” the suit charges.

According to the case, placing a child in a physical restraint or in an isolation room from which they are prevented from leaving is prohibited under Alaska law, except under certain strict conditions. Though it is well documented that these techniques are “dangerous, traumatizing, ineffective, counterproductive, and should be used only in rare emergency situations,” there have been more than 1,800 recorded incidents involving student restraint or seclusion at schools within the district since 2015, the complaint relays.

“The vast majority of these incidents involved students with one or more disabilities,” the filing notes.

Per the lawsuit, the school district’s policies state that physical restraint and seclusion cannot be used as “form[s] of discipline” or to “force compliance,” and they are prohibited “unless the student’s behavior poses an imminent danger of physical injury to the student or others” and if alternative interventions would be futile. The district policies also point out that the use of these methods must be limited to only what is necessary to resolve the emergency, or until a “less restrictive intervention is effective to stop the danger,” the suit explains.

However, despite its own policies, MSBSD relies on restraint and seclusion as “common disciplinary method[s] for students with disabilities, rather than limiting those techniques to rare emergency situations where no safe alternative exists,” the case alleges.

Moreover, the school district has purportedly failed to document and report its use of these methods in accordance with state law, and is accused of “significantly underreport[ing]” incidents involving student restraint or seclusion, the complaint contends.

In light of the foregoing, MSBSD has, therefore, “misled parents about the mistreatment of their children at school and has misrepresented the frequency of its use of restraint and seclusion in its required annual reports to the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development,” the filing argues.

The plaintiffs filed the case to seek redress for alleged discrimination by MSBSD against their son, a seven-year-old student with a disability who attends an elementary school in the district, the lawsuit says. The plaintiffs claim their son has been placed in “solitary confinement” in his school’s seclusion room numerous times for behavioral incidents, but the parents say they did not receive a report of the events until much later, in violation of state law.

In addition, the plaintiffs allege that on March 7, 2023, their child was unlawfully restrained multiple times by the co-defendants—the principal, a “tutor advisor” and a paraprofessional employed at the elementary school.

According to the boy’s parents, when he came home from school that day, they noticed “significant injuries” on his body, and the student complained of pain in his jaw, wrist and forearm. However, the parents received no report of an incident from the school, the suit states.

Though MSBSD has “consistently maintained that [the student] was never restrained on March 7, 2023,” video footage of the incident made available to the plaintiffs later that month showed that the child was “repeatedly manhandled and restrained” by the staff members, the case contests.

The complaint charges that as a result of the defendants’ use of these “harmful techniques,” students with disabilities “have suffered significant injuries and trauma, have been segregated from their peers, have missed significant instructional time, and have been denied equal and meaningful access to the District’s programs and services.”

The lawsuit looks to represent any current MSBSD students with an identified disability—including, but not limited to, those with an individualized education program (IEP) or 504 plan—who have been subjected to a restraint or seclusion by district staff. The suit also seeks to cover the parents or legal guardians of such students.

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