Five employees of the Tucson Unified School District have received warnings after an investigation found that a high school student with disabilities was routinely left tethered to a fence, according to a report in the Arizona Daily Star. The student’s name was not disclosed.

Bus monitor Thomas Giacoma said he regularly attached the student to the fence by his backpack when dropping him off at school so that he wouldn’t fall over or wander away before someone came to get him. The practice came to light earlier this month, when an assistant principal obtained a photo that teachers had taken of the student restrained on the fence.

Giacoma said he had tethered the student throughout the year without hearing any disapproval, and that the student had not seemed distressed. He said he had stopped the restraint in March after a teacher complained that he was humiliating the student.

Sue Kroeger, director of the Disability Resources center at the University of Arizona and who teaches disability studies in the College of Education, said the restraint described in the investigation is “disrespectful, undignified and totally unacceptable.”

Kroeger said she was less inclined to shake her finger than to see the incident as symptomatic of a larger problem — the stigmatizing of people with disabilities.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under restraints and seclusion, special education, stigma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.