Breaking the Vicious Cycle of Permanent Detention

This case began, as most do, with a call from a parent who was at his wit’s end and exhausted as he tried to describe his experience with a rural Oregon high school.  

The story for his son with learning disabilities was one of endless detentions, suspensions, and other disciplinary actions that all seemed to produce more of the same.  Typically, his son would miss one detention because he was ill, had forgotten to report, or was absent for an excused reason that the school failed to note on its attendance log.

Although the parents straightened out some of these misunderstandings, the boy had over and over “earned” 2-4 more punishments by the workings of a policy that added on multiple new detentions for each one missed.  The parents could never catch up with the system and their son was essentially in permanent detention, much like someone who could never catch up with the interest payments well enough to get at his original debt. 

These issues had reached a point that the school sent a letter to the father threatening his immediate arrest if he entered school property. 

Then the boy developed juvenile onset diabetes and nearly died. 

During this crisis, the parents were coming home from the hospital to read notifications of more detentions that seemed never to stop despite repeated calls to the school. 

When the boy finally returned to school under strict medical orders to monitor his sugar levels frequently and call his parents if he felt funny, he continued to receive disciplinary referrals whenever he was late for class because he needed time to monitor his sugar level or eat something to affect it.  Additionally, the boy's Individualized Education Program (IEP) did little more than note that the boy was learning disabled and ask him to take notes, record assignments, and monitor his own progress in all of the classes that he was failing. 

Through a series of long IEP meetings with what seemed a good team, we were able to rework the IEP until it accurately described learning deficits and laid out practical objectives and strategies for his teachers to use in class. 

The new plan identified a person who would monitor assignments and speak with the parents on a weekly basis to help the boy stay abreast of his work and get additional help in the resource room when he needed it.  It also eliminated discipline for health issues and created an intermediary to sort out plain old bad behavior from what was caused by special health problems.  The plan required that substitutes would be informed of its key elements.  

We also secured agreement to conduct an assistive technology assessment that eventually identified a number of high and low tech tools that were tested over the summer and first weeks of school the following year to see which ones helped this boy work around some of the problems caused by his disability.  The district agreed to do this testing during instruction that he received over the summer to help him catch up with what he had lost over the last year. 

By mid April, despite all of this apparent progress, the plan was being subverted by the building principal who continued to “add on” detentions for ones that had been missed, often months ago. Many of these either occurred during the diabetic crisis described above or were an “interest” result of it.  The district special education director agreed that this was ill-advised, but confided that she had been unable to stop what was occurring. 

Eventually, I suggested to her that I would write her a letter laying out my opinion that the good work of her team was being subverted in a way that risked exposing the district to serious legal liability.  I sent a copy to the Superintendent.

A few days later, I was told that the Superintendent had decided to “clean the slate” and eliminate all still outstanding detentions.  At the end of April, the father told me that his son had passed his first week without any new disciplinary issues in over a year. 

Teachers at our last meeting reported universally better academic progress and behavior in class.

Near the end of the school year, I received a call notifying me that, “FYI,” the building principal had resigned.