NJ: Parents Allege Child’s Mouth Taped in Heights

by Mark Swanson
December 12, 2008

A Haddon Heights couple presented the town school board with allegations on Tuesday night – the kind that can give any district a black eye. The parents, whose names are withheld to protect their child’s identity, charged that on Wed., Dec. 3, their son had his mouth taped over by a substitute teacher.

On that day, they said, the substitute teacher was in charge of the second grade class. At one point during the school day, the teacher used tape to cover the mouth of their son. The tape was left in place for about 20 minutes.

The parents told the board that their son, who is a classified special education student, has “sensory integration issues,” which are documented in his individual education plan, called an IEP.

Sensory integration disorders generally cause difficulties with processing information from the five senses – vision, auditory, touch, smell and taste – sense of movement and positional sense, called proprioception. The disorder generally causes anxiety and confusion.

With his disorder written into his IEP, the couple says in a letter to the board, they expect that any staff members who would have contact with him would have been trained in sensory integration issues.

“Clearly, the substitute assigned to [his] class on December 2 and 3 was not properly trained to interact with a child with special needs,” they write.
Superintendent Dr. Nancy Hacker declined to comment on the situation.

At the meeting, the boy’s mother said that while administrators contacted her, she got the impression they were trying to sweep the incident under the rug.

Board member Mike Harshaw said that from his experience, some districts require that teachers sign off on IEPs as a way of showing that they are familiar with them. He wondered if anything like that was in place in Heights.

While the district officially has no comment, solicitor Joseph Betley said at the meeting that teachers are not required by the state to sign off on IEPs.

Board President Dr. Phillip Hammer noted that matters regarding staffing are the realm of the superintendent. The board would be welcome to consider the incident and district policy and make their recommendations to Hacker.

According to George Rafferty, the director of special education, IEPs of elementary-level students are on file in the building principals’ offices. They can be reviewed by teachers at any time. Student case managers also review the IEPs with teachers at both the elementary and high school level.

In the past, the parents said, their son was singled out at recess time because teachers did not feel he was dressed appropriately to play outdoors. The parents said that because of his disorder, he often has difficulty wearing long pants. They felt that it was unfair for their child to be secluded or singled out this way.

The parents told the board that what they want is knowledge that the substitute won’t return to their child’s school again. “We need [the board and administrators] to be clear that we will weigh all legal options if the substitute that taped [his] mouth is permitted to substitute in the [school] again,” they say in their letter. “Of course, we are sure that you would not want that quality of substitute to be employed by our school district.”

They further say that they have not authorized and will not consent to any activity that involves physically restraining their child while at school or going to and from school. Special education law requires the use of functional assessments of behavior and the development of positive behavior plans to address such challenges.

The New Jersey Council on Developmental Disabilities’ position, from its website, is that the “use of restraints, seclusion, restrictive equipment and aversive techniques must be carefully defined and closely monitored to prevent misuse of these practices.” The need for such techniques should be minimized, says the council, and “certain restrictive and aversive techniques must be prohibited.”

Nationally, this is not the first time a teacher is alleged to have taped a child’s mouth. In 2005, an Aurora, Colo., taping incident sparked a police investigation and resulted in the teacher’s suspension. In New York this year, a family reportedly sued their school district after their four-year-old daughter was taped for talking during a class “quiet time.”