Want to stop kids in duffel bags?

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Please tell your congress members to support S.2020 - A bill to protect all school children against harmful and life-threatening seclusion and restraint practices.

Here's the summary:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/19108150/1 ... -16-11.pdf

Here's a convenient place to email your lawmakers:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s2020/show

From an email on my state's listserve:
However, the bill has some opposition in its current form. The American Association of School Administrators will be opposing this iteration of the bill on matters of practicality and funding.
http://www.aasa.org/aasablog.aspx?id=21396&blogid=286

Among their concerns:
They say the term "serious bodily injury" is too high a test for teachers and paraprofessionals to apply proactively, especially during an incident, and opens the door for onerous lawsuits against school districts. They prefer the wording "bodily injury."
They say the training requirement (school personnel administering restraints must be trained in a state-approved crisis intervention program) could be a considerable financial burden on small-town districts and schools.
They have concerns about the aftermath of an incident, including the student's immunity from prosecution if they admit to illegal activities that led to the incident, such as non-prescribed or illegal drugs.
They say the data collection is yet another time-consuming burden to put on teachers and administrators, and inadequate data collection threatens FAPE funding.

I'm tired of hearing about kids restrained, secluded and abused at school. Recently a 7 year old boy was handcuffed to a chair during a meltdown in my city.

I'm tired of it too; it makes me sick. It brings back too many memories I'd much rather forget. But I'm not sure any law is going to help. They'll keep on doing the same things, and distorting the facts to pretend that there was enough danger they had to. The attempt - before the fact - to water this law down just illustrates my point. They want wriggle room. They want to be able to squelch and stomp us.

This is not just an opinion. Years ago, the state where I live passed a law preventing teachers from physically punishing students. I was still physically punished. In the worst case, I was dumped - still seated in my one piece desk / chair unit - onto my back on the floor. My "crime" was "talking back". No physical danger, nothing but words. And I got hurled back onto the floor. By some miracle, I wasn't injured, just banged up a bit and scared out of my wits. But it could have turned out worse.

Kids who are different are going to be abused for as long as society continues to force them into a system that places a premium on standardisation. Such a system, in order to exist, in order to force all the other, more malleable kids to "toe the line", must put that kind of pressure on those who can't or won't conform. It is a structural fault of the system.