Newsday

Thousands of times a year in Michigan schools, students who are considered a potential danger to themselves and others — many of them children with disabilities — are physically restrained or put in seclusion. That’s despite an almost 10-year-old law aimed at reducing instances where students are secluded or restrained. The broad consensus is that schools should do more to reduce their reliance on these techniques, but there’s disagreement on whether new legislation is needed to make that happen. Current state policy makes it clear that schools should only consider physically restraining a student or confining them to a room away from others in emergency situations where a student is at risk of harming themselves or others. But critics say schools still too often seclude and restrain students, and the state should make it clearer what actually constitutes an emergency…