'It hurts your bones': Private special ed schools can restrain kids with disabilities 1,000s of times. Parents might not know.

This story was produced by the Teacher Project, an education reporting fellowship at Columbia Journalism School.

Story continuesExactly how many children receive this kind of treatment, however, is unknown. Most states don’t require private schools to report any information about restraint and seclusion – even if they get millions of dollars each year from the public school district. In a first-of-its-kind effort, the Teacher Project and the USA TODAY Network reached out to all 50 states for data on restraint and seclusion in special-education private schools. Just 10 states and Washington, D.C., were able to provide complete information.

“The thought of us literally paying our tax dollars to institutions that are affirmatively harming kids … is unacceptable,” said Annie Acosta, a public policy director at the Arc, a disability-rights advocacy network. “I went along with it because at the time I didn’t know much about the school system, the way I know now,” she said.

In 2011, at the urging of the school district, the siblings enrolled in High Road Academy of Wallingford. Every child in those campuses is placed by a public school, and the company sees itself as an extension of the public school system. Connecticut taxpayers paid a little over $12 million in tuition and transportation expenses to High Road schools in 2018-19, according to information from a public records request.

"They put your arm like this,” Shirley explained years later, sticking her arms out behind her, “tie your arm behind your back and squeeze it tight. And it hurts your bones.” “These are highly trained professionals that are accustomed to working with students that have significant needs,” said Jeff Cohen, CEO of Catapult Learning. Restraint, he said, is “a last resort in all instances” after staff have tried other ways to de-escalate a situation.

Shirley was unresponsive for five minutes before she came to, according to what a school aide later told doctors. The school called an ambulance that took her to the emergency room. Doctors wrote she’d had a seizure. Sometimes, staff put Shirley into the seclusion rooms for dangerous behavior, like trying to climb out of a window or hitting her teachers. Other times, the danger was less obvious, like when she threatened to throw water at a teacher’s face or punched coats hanging on a wall.

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