A Teacher Dragged a 6-Year-Old With Autism by His Ankle. Federal Civil Rights Officials Might Not Do Anything. — ProPublica

A brief video tasks inside a Illinois school captured worrying behavior: a teacher grabbing a 6 -year -old boy with autism next to the ankle and dragging him down the back hall.

The early incident of April would be angry at any school, but it happened in the Garrison School, part of a special education district, where at some point the students were arrested at the hygrest rate of any district in the country. The teacher was accused of the battery week after the pressure of the student’s parents.

About eight months have passed since the United States Department of Education ordered Garrison to change the way he responded to the behavior of students with disabilities. The department said it would monitor the Four Rivers Special Education District, which Garrison operates, after an investigation of Propublic and Chicago Tribune in 2022 that found that the school often involved the police and used disciplinary methods.

But the Regional Office of the Office of the Department of Civil Rights in Chicago, which was responsible for Illinois and five other states, was one of the seven abolished by the administration of President Donald Trump in March; The offices were closed and all their staff was fired.

The future of supervision in Four Rivers, in the center-west of Illinois, is now uncertain. There is no registration of any communication from the Department of Education to the District from the Trump Tok office, and its administration has completed an anti -demination agreement with at least one school district, in Dakota del Sur.

In the April incident, Xander Reed, who has autism and does not speak, did not stop playing with blocks and went to physical education when he was tolerated to a police report. Xander then “stirred and fell to the ground,” the report said. When he refused to get up, a substitute teacher, Rhea Drake, dragged him into the gym.

Another personnel member played a photo and alerted school leadership. The director Amy Haarmann told the Police that Drake’s actions “were not an acceptable practice in school,” said the police report.

Xander’s family asked to press the charges. Drake, who had his leg working in the Xander classroom for more than a month, was charged approximately three weeks after the battery of minor crimes, according to the records. She declared herself innocent. His lawyer told Propublic that he and Drake did not want to comment for this story.

Tracey Fair, director of the district, said that school officials made sure that students were safe after the incident and that Drake will not return to the district. She declined to comment more about the incident, but said that school officials take their “obligation to keep students and staff very seriously.”

Doug Thompson, Chief of Police at Jacksonville, where the school is located, said he could not discuss the case.

Xander’s mother, Amanda, said her son fears to go to the garrison, where Sid has also been punished for being put in a “crisis room” of the school, a small space where students are when the staff feels bad or needs time alone. “He didn’t want to go to school,” he said. “We want to get an education. We want to be with other children.”

Four Rivers serves an area of ​​eight counties, and Garrison’s students go from children in Kindergarten to high school students. Around 70 students registered at the beginning of the school year. The districts that feel that they cannot educate a student in the neighborhood schools send them to four rivers; Xander travels 40 minutes in each sense to attend Garrison.

The federal scrutiny of the garrison begged after Propublic and the Tribune revealed that the duration in a period of five years, the school employees called the police to inform that the students behave on average on all other school days. Police made more than 100 students as Young Axis 9 fasting that period. They were handcuffed and tasks to the police station for being harmful or disobedient; If they had physically lashed out against the staff, they were accused of serious crime of aggravated battery.

News organizations also found that garrison employees frequently eliminated students from their classrooms and sent them to crisis rooms when students were annoying, disobedient or aggressive.

The findings of the civil rights office echoed those of the news investigation. He determined that Garrison routinely feels the students to the police for non -criminal conduct that could have a relationship with their disabilities, something prohibited by federal law.

The district had to inform its progress by making changes in the OCR last December, which seems to have done, according to the documents that Propublic obeyed through a request for public records.

But the records show that the OCR has not communicated with the district since then and it is not clear what will come from work in Four Rivers. The OCR has ended at least one agreement that held last year, an agreement with a South Dakota school district that had agreed to take measures to end discrimination against its American native students. The spokespersons of the Department of Education did not answer the propublic questions.

Scott Reed, Xander Reed’s father, 6, said he and Xander’s mother were aware of the frequent use of the police and disciplinary in Four Rivers and the participation of OCR. But reluctantly they were registered this school year because they were not told that there are no other options.

“You can say that you have made all these changes, but you shelter,” said Scott Reed. For example, he said, just after confirming that Drake had dragged the 50 -pound child down the hall, the school leadership sent her home. “They did not call the police until I arrived at school and demanded it” hours later, he said.

“If that were a student” who acted that way, “they would have handcuffed bone.”

The new propublic reports have found that from the Begen school in August, the police have been called to school at least 30 times in response to students’ behavior.

Thompson, the police chief, told Propublic that, in one case, the officers were summoned because a student said “inappropriate things.” They were also called the last report that a student hit and bit the staff members. The officers “helped to calm the student,” according to the local newspaper police.

And the police have continued to judge the students of the garrison. There are one legs six students for damages to the aggravated property or battery in this school year, according to police data. A 15 -year -old girl was arrested for spitting on the face of a staff member, and a 10 -year -old boy was arrested after being accused of hitting an employee. There were at least nine student trial last year, according to police data.

Thompson said that four students between the ages of 10 and 16 have arrested this school year for the most serious aggravated battery charge; One of the students was arrested three times. He said he believes that called police officers are inevitable, but that school staff now handles more students’ behavior concerns without reaching the police.

“I feel that now the most oriented service calls have done what they can and now need help,” said Thompson. “They have tried to desire themselves and the student is not cooperating yet or is out of control and they need more help.”

According to the Jacksonville newspaper, he called the police for school to deal with “a disturbance that involves a student” in the local newspaper of Jacksonville. This time it did not end in a trial; A father arrived and “made the student obey staff members.”