The lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in D.C., alleges that the accused shooter was a juvenile criminal offender who was in the custody of the city’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services at the time of the shooting.

The lawsuit claims the District acted with indifference and negligence in the supervision of the teenager, resulting in the August 2010 killing of 31-year-old Neil Godleski.

A spokesman for the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services on Thursday did not return a phone message for comment.

According to police at the time, Godleski was gunned down in Sherman Circle shortly after midnight while biking home from the restaurant where he worked as a waiter.

Police said 17-year-old Eric D. Foreman fired multiple shots at the cyclist, then stood over the college student and fired two more shots. Foreman raked through Godleski’s pockets, stole $60 and fled. The motive was robbery, police said.

Foreman was a criminal juvenile offender who was supposed to be under the supervision and detention of DYRS, the lawsuit states. Foreman had been sent to live in the Dupree House, a group home at 5619 Colorado Ave. NW.

The suit said Foreman was known to be a gang member and had a propensity for violence, and cited a report that one in five of all homicides in the District involved a youth in the custody of DYRS, either as a suspect or a victim.

The lawsuit comes at a time when Mayor Vince Gray is trying to get a handle on youth violence and the city’s juvenile justice system.

Five of the six people who were shot on Halloween were teenagers, and the 17-year-old boy who was shot in the head in Georgetown that night was also under the supervision of DYRS, sources have told The Washington Examiner.

The teenager accused of shooting a cabbie over 75 cents last week in Northeast had escaped from a group home at the time of the slaying, sources said. He was later found to have hid at the home of his aunt, a DYRS counselor.

And the teen who was arrested last week in a fatal stabbing of another teen in a Petworth playground also had escaped custody of the youth agency.

Since changing it’s Juvenile policies, DYRS has had a series of missteps leading to multiple fatalities.

Teen who fled from BWI is latests to escape from city juvenile authorities

At least 9 wards of DC now charged with murder

53 youths in killings were D.C. wards on ‘at risk’ list

Crystal Shelby, suffered brain injuries from a May 1995 beating by three girls in the hallway of Le Roy High School, located about 25 miles from Rochester, N.Y.

“The lessons here for school districts are: ‘Don’t disregard a student who asks for help,’ and ‘You have to be effective in your discipline,’ ” said plaintiff’s counsel Terry D. Smith of Smith, Keller, Miner & O’Shea of Buffalo, N.Y. Translation. It is not enough to have some discipline policy in place. The policy has to be effective in maintaining a safe environment conducive to learning.

“The girls who assaulted Crystal were three hard cases who had been disciplined and suspended time and again.” According to attorneys on both sides, the night before the assault Shelby had an argument with the three girls, who explicitly threatened to attack her the following day in school. The following morning Shelby told assistant principal Neil O’Brien that she had been threatened but he took no action and told the girl to proceed to her homeroom.

During the liability phase of the bifurcated trial the jury found O’Brien had acted with reckless disregard for Shelby’s safety. The three girls attacked Shelby in the hallway, beating her head with a padlock and slamming her headfirst into a wall. She suffers hydrocephalus, a condition known in lay terms as water on the brain and characterized by dangerous pooling of fluid in the cranium. She has endured seven hospital stays and six brain surgeries to treat the condition, according to Brian Mahoney, who represented Shelby along with Smith. Shelby has two shunts in her cranium to drain fluid. She suffers persistent cognitive difficulties.

The facts alleged were that since January 27, 2009, Colbey has been eligible for special education services in the District under the category of “Emotional Disturbance”. Colbey received an Individualized Education Program (“IEP”) that required a small specialized setting with frequent individual support where Colbey would be protected from bullying and harassment by other students.

Despite his diagnoses and the recommendations of the IEP team, the District failed to protect Colbey from harassment and assault by peers on the school bus and in his segregated classrooms. School staff allegedly allowed Colbey to be harassed by other students in his program, and in one instance placed him in a “time-out room” with another student who physically attacked and injured Colbey, causing a broken collarbone and fear of returning to school

The District Court held that it had jurisdiction over the case and the settlement offer, and that Colbey was entitled to damages for the school’s failure to protect him from physical assault by another student.

If you registered or paid for a seminar between March 10 – April 24, 2012, please re-register. Don’t worry about double registering, we’ll take care of that on our end.

Thank you and sorry for any inconvenience.

If you have any questions, call Joy Ann at 845-255-4031.

Some highlights from AASA’s Report:

AASA has long opposed the prohibition of seclusion and restraint in public schools. The fact is the use of seclusion and restraint has enabled many students with serious emotional or behavioral conditions to be educated not only within our public schools, but also in the least restrictive and safest environments possible.

In response to a request from the Kansas State Board of Education for guidelines on the use of seclusion and restraint, a parent and special-education teacher anonymously submitted this letter in 2011.

To: Kansas Legislators & State Board of Ed.,

. . . It should be noted that without the appropriate use of seclusion and restraint procedures, I am 100% certain that my daughter would not have been able to stay in public school. Her “meltdowns” over the years have been intense! They include every behavior you can imagine and she has succeeded in hurting several adults and damaging property on numerous occasions. This has been an incredibly difficult journey for our family. Without the use of seclusion and restraints, Jane would have been placed out of home in a residential school setting, which honestly, would have been intolerable for me. However, there is no chance a public school could have managed her behavior without appropriate techniques.

. . .It would be disastrous for some students if seclusion and restraints were not options in public school. While I would be appalled to see any child hurt or their self-esteem damaged, those instances of abuse of seclusion and restraint should be dealt with on an individual basis. We should not punish schools and students where things are going well.

IDEA statute was never meant to restrict parents from receiving a unique, effective education plan for their child.

For these students, federal legislation that prohibits these practices from being written into an individualized education plan (IEP) or behavioral intervention plan means that school personnel are unable to work with parents to create a plan for coping with the student when their behavior becomes unmanageable. Legislation that prohibits parents and school personnel from communicating about the student’s needs and corresponding school interventions runs counter to the entire purpose of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA). If IEP teams comprised of both parents and school personnel agree the use of seclusion and restraint will enable a student to remain in the least restrictive environment possible and to educationally benefit from the teaching and services the student needs, then these techniques should be allowed to be written into the student’s IEP. The IDEA statute was never meant to restrict parents from receiving a unique, effective education plan for their child.

HWC’s Position

Not 12 hours prior to seeing AASA’s Report, HWC was advising the Wisconsin Legislature of the same thing namely that seclusion and restraint are written into a student’s behavioral plan or IEP so that teachers and clinicians can intervene and stop a student’s maladaptive behavior before the behavior escalates to the point of being seriously destructive to the student or others.

We also agree with AASA that any law, policy or regulation that would limit the professionals and persons who have actual responsibility to determine whether restraint is appropriate and in the best interest of the student is unlawful. The right to make such determination belongs to the person and professionals and person directly responsible for the student. IDEA was never intended to restrict parents in their options for developing a behavioral and treatment plan for their child.

AASA: How Seclusion and Restraint Protects Students and School Personnel

“Parent training is one of the best, evidence-supported treatment interventions in child psychiatry for other conditions, such as for children with ADHD or children with oppositional defiant disorder,” said senior study author Lawrence Scahill, a professor at Yale University School of Nursing and Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn.

The study involved 124 children aged 4 to 13 with an autism spectrum disorder and serious behavioral issues, including daily, prolonged tantrums, aggression or self-injurious behavior. The children were prescribed risperidone (Risperdal), an antipsychotic drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating severe behavioral problems in children with autism.

Half the children and their parents were also assigned to a six-month, structured “parent training” program. Parents were asked to identify the most difficult, disruptive behaviors and to think about what preceded the incidents and why the child might do it. They then worked with counselors to devise strategies to avoid the triggers and help the child respond better to the everyday stressors.

Parents who underwent training reported a greater decrease in problem behaviors than the parents of children on medication alone, researchers found.

The study is published in the February issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Joseph Horrigan, assistant vice president and head of medical research for Autism Speaks, said studies like this provide more evidence that parent training can help kids and their families cope with autism-related behavioral problems.

Handle With Care has been training parents in behavior management techniques for over 30 years.  See our Parent Training page for the different types of training offered including HWC’s  Early Childhood: Pre-School and Early Elementary School Program.

The News Courier reports (http://bit.ly/z6WjDi ) the lawsuit was filed Thursday in Madison County.

The suit states that school officials — including the school board, Superintendent Dee Fowler and Principal Robbie Smith — failed to protect Todd Brown from another student who had a history of behavioral issues.

Brown’s family maintains that the other student should not have been transferred to Discovery Middle School because of a history of bad behavior, and that school officials were aware of that history.

We have a student that is head butting his desk while seated. What is the best approach to restrain the student in this situation?

He will also head butt the staff when they attempt to restrain him.

Answer:

You do not mention the age of the level of functioning of this student.  For this answer we assume you have already tried less intrusive strategies to interrupt the behavior.

These are some of your options:

1. For an older child or adolescent, you can use a standard PRT initiated from behind and over the seat back.  You may also want to add another adult to help keep his body from pressing forward toward the table top with an arm; keeping his back pressed backward and into the seat back.  If you cannot prevent his body from pressing forward and his head is coming in contact with the table top, allow him to lean forward (while remaining in a PRT) and use the cushion and some manual stabilization to protect his head and the head of the PRT person from impact forces.  This is the identical strategy that you should use if the student was being held in the “Neutral Position” on the floor.  As an additional precaution, you may want to get a cushion to place between the front of his head and the desk and a second cushion, if necessary to place between the back of his head and the person performing the hold. You can get a “stadium cushion” from one of the sporting good stores. They are made out of vinyl and are perfect for this purpose.
2. For a younger child, you can use a “Modified PRT for Smaller Children” initiated from behind and over the seat back.  The arm in front will be able to keep him pressed backward and into the seat back.   If you cannot prevent his body from pressing forward and his head is coming in contact with the table top, allow him to lean forward (while remaining in a Modified PRT) and use the cushion and some manual stabilization at the student’s temples to protect his head and the head of the PRT person from any impact forces.

The rule requires that:

• All schools or programs that utilize physical restraint must be trained in physical restraint
• All schools or programs that utilize physical restraint develop a written policy to govern its use

In addition to Georgia’s restraint rules, we are providing a link to an administrative decision issued by the Georgia Board of Education.  Should a teacher, staff or student be placed in imminent danger and need to resort to an intervention not in the Georgia rule and then have his/her job threatened, there is a Georgia Board of Education administrative decision that supports their actions and prohibits administrative ramifications.  See Dixon v. Fulton County Board of Education, Case No. 2008-15 (holding: teachers are allowed to use reasonable force to protect themselves from bodily harm even if the intervention is not included in the school’s policy ).

Handle With Care provides training that meets Georgia’s requirements on restraint and seclusion.

HWC provides training to schools across the country and Georgia in behavior management, behavioral supports and least restrictive intervention training through our basic and “train-the-trainer” Instructor Certification Program. 

HWC’s program includes training in standing, seated and face-up restraint.  We also have an early childhood and elementary school program and an outstanding verbal program for de-escalation, behavioral supports and behavior management.

See HWC’s schedule for training in Georgia. We also provide on-site training.

For additional information about HWC training contact us at info@handlewithcare.com or Joy at 845-255-4031.

The new rule went into effect on August 15, 2011.  Part of the requirements of the rule is that schools must obtain training to meet the requirements and purposes of the new rule. 

The purpose of Rule 4500 is to:

• Create and maintain a positive and safe learning environment in schools
• Promote positive behavioral interventions and supports in schools
• Ensure that students are not subjected to inappropriate use of restraint or seclusion

To assist the schools in obtaining the requisite training, the Vermont Board of Education evaluated training programs including Handle With Care’s.  Handle With Care is approved by the Vermont Board of Education to provide requisite Rule 4500 training to schools.

 As an approved training provider, Handle With Care provides training to schools across Vermont in behavior management, behavioral supports and least restrictive intervention training  through our basic and  “train-the-trainer” Instructor Certification Program. We also have an early childhood and elementary school program.

Contact Joy at 845-255-4031 or info@handlewithcare.com for more information.