On September 2, 2025 (form dated August 30, 2025), the Department of Public Instruction (department) received a complaint under state and federal special education law from #### (parent) against the #### (district). This is the department’s decision regarding that complaint. The identified issues are described below and pertain to the period of time beginning September 2, 2024.
Whether the district properly developed and implemented the individualized education program (IEP) of a student with a disability regarding positive behavioral supports.
School districts meet their obligation to provide a free appropriate public education to each student with a disability, in part, by developing a program based on the student’s unique, disability-related needs that is reasonably calculated to enable the student to make appropriate progress considering the student’s circumstances, documenting that program in the IEP, and implementing the program as articulated in the IEP. The IEP must contain annual goals that are both ambitious and achievable so that the gap in academic achievement or functional performance is narrowed or closed during the period of the IEP. 34 CFR §§ 300.320-300.324; Wis. Stat. § 115.78(2); Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, 137 S. Ct. 988. Each student’s IEP must address the student's needs that result from the student's disability in order to enable the student to be involved and make appropriate progress in the general education curriculum and toward their IEP goals and meet the student's other educational needs that result from the student's disability. If the student's IEP team determines the student's behavior impedes the student's learning or that of others, the IEP team must consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports to address the behavior. 34 CFR §§ 300.320(a) & 300.324(a). The IEP must be written in a manner that clearly describes the school district’s commitment of resources to the parent and all involved in developing and implementing the IEP. The IEP must be accessible to staff responsible for implementing the student’s IEP, and they must be informed of their specific responsibilities. IEPs must be implemented as written. 34 CFR § 300.323; Wis. Stat. § 115.787.
The student who is the subject of this complaint transferred to the district at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year. The student’s initial evaluation conducted in a previous school district in 2022 identified the student as eligible for special education under the disability category criteria for autism. The student’s IEPs from the previous district included behavioral intervention plans (BIPs) and safety plans for the student. The IEPs described that the student could become dysregulated in new situations or with unfamiliar adults. When the student becomes dysregulated, they sometimes engage in behaviors including throwing items around the room, hitting or kicking adults, and running out of the room. In the student’s previous school district, staff would remove the student from the learning environment until the student was calm and ready to re-enter the ongoing activity. The IEPs explained that attempts to clear the room of peers seemed to cause the student additional escalation as they became upset that friends had left. Previous district staff observed that the student exhibited far fewer behaviors when the student had a positive relationship with the adults in the classroom (and adults are consistent), and when proactive strategies are scheduled into daily routines (e.g., purposeful movement breaks, structure, foreshadowing, etc.). In addition to these proactive strategies, services to address behavior in the student’s IEPs included visual supports, social/emotional strategies, emotional regulation supports, preferential seating, pre-teaching of boundaries and defined spaces within the school environment, clear choices given, redirection and prompts for focusing and refocusing of attention, access to sensory tools, opportunities for improved sensory processing skills providing for more or less input, access to calm space/alternative workspace, and supervision during all academic work times, recesses, and field trips.
The student started attending school in the current district at the beginning of the 2024 25 school year. The district adopted the prior district’s IEP and behavior regulation plans. District staff reported that most days, the positive behavioral supports in the IEP were effective with the exceptions of five behavior incidents that resulted in the use of seclusion and physical restraint. The first two incidents occurred early in the year on September 5, 2024, and September 9, 2024. In late September, the student’s special education teacher proposed a trial of teaching some new relationship-building and positive regulation strategies. Two other incidents occurred on October 16, 2024, and November 11, 2024. The student’s parent and staff met informally following the November incident. Participants decided to address behavior concerns formally during the student’s annual IEP team meeting. Those concerns and information from the relationship-building trial were incorporated into the student’s IEP by the team during the annual meeting on December 3, 2024. The IEP team included detailed instructions for staff in response to the student’s dysregulation. In addition, the IEP team added specially designed instruction, the related service of occupational therapy to address regulation strategies, and sensory tools and strategies. District staff reported that these additional services and supports were effective.
On March 5, 2025, the student had a series of behavioral events when staff utilized both physical restraint and seclusion with the student. This prompted renewed attention to the student’s behavior and relationships with district staff. The parent asserted that the district needed to provide more staff training and put more thought and effort into preventing dysregulation rather than changing their responses to dysregulation. The parent stated that when the student feels supported, they are better able to maintain regulation and engagement with learning. The parent’s educational consultant provided a report to district staff on March 18, 2025. The report described several recommended changes to the IEP, including more specificity in visual supports and more detail in foreshadowing/priming. In a meeting on March 20, 2025, the IEP team added “executive functioning” as a disability-related need to improve the student’s flexibility in thinking and self-management, including the student’s ability to adapt to changes. The IEP team revised the language in the “emotional regulation” disability-related need to include specific language related to sensory processing. The IEP team revised the existing emotional regulation goal to support the student’s ability to identify their current emotional state. The IEP team updated sensory strategies to include opportunities to sort/organize objects and the use of clicker. The IEP team also updated the statement regarding “visual supports” to include specific timestamps throughout the day and link visual support tool(s) to each activity/time of school day and add a supplementary aid that addresses scheduling predictable opportunities throughout the student’s school day to engage in tasks involving areas of specific interest. The IEP team emphasized relationship-building as a priority for the student. Staff also explained the role of the “zones of regulation” framework, “understanding my body” and interception curriculum, using consistent visual supports, using consistent language structures, and teaching skills to build awareness around the student’s behaviors.
In May 2024, the student’s parent requested that a decompression room be created adjacent to the student’s classroom. The district refused that request and proposed a decompression room on the same floor as the general education classroom given that the student transitioned between multiple classrooms. The district conducted a reevaluation on June 3, 2025, and identified additional social communication needs, particularly in pragmatic language and social reciprocity. The district planned to provide additional training specifically for staff assigned to work with the student by September 12, 2025. However, the student’s parents removed them from the district prior to the implementation of that training.
The student’s BIP provided staff with several support options depending on the student’s state of regulation. The special education teacher that worked most closely with the student left employment with the district prior to this complaint investigation, but the available information indicates staff employed at least one of the support options prior to each behavior incident. By providing the student supports as described in their IEP and BIP, meeting frequently as an IEP team to review the student’s circumstances and revise the behavioral supports, attempting to work on relationship-building, and conducting a reevaluation, the district properly developed and implemented the IEP regarding positive behavioral supports.
Whether the district improperly utilized seclusion or physical restraint with the student.
Wisconsin law prohibits the use of seclusion or physical restraint with students at school unless a student's behavior presents a clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety of the student or others and is the least restrictive intervention feasible. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(3). Seclusion means the involuntary confinement of a student, apart from other students, in a room or area from which the student is physically prevented from leaving. The room or area in which the student is secluded must be free of objects or fixtures that may injure the student. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(2)(c). If a room is used for seclusion, no door in the room may be capable of being locked or have a lock on it. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(2)(f).
Physical restraint means a restriction that immobilizes or reduces the ability of a student to freely move the torso, arms, legs, or head. If physical restraint is used, the degree of force and the duration of the physical restraint may not exceed the degree and duration that are reasonable and necessary to resolve the clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety of the student or others. No covered individual, such as a school employee, may use physical restraint on a pupil at school unless he or she has received training meeting state requirements. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(6)(a). The law provides an exception in the case of an emergency only if a covered individual who has received training is not immediately available due to the unforeseen nature of the emergency. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(6)(c).
Whenever a covered individual or a law enforcement officer uses seclusion or physical restraint with a student at school, the school principal or designee must notify the student’s parent of the incident as soon as practicable, but no later than one business day after the incident. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(4)(a). The principal must meet with the school staff who participated in the incident to discuss the events preceding, during, and following the use of seclusion or physical restraint. The discussion must include how to prevent the need for seclusion or physical restraint, including the factors that may have contributed to the escalation of behaviors, alternatives to physical restraint, such as de-escalation techniques and possible interventions, and other strategies that the principal determines are appropriate. Within two business days, the principal must complete a written report of the incident including the student’s name, date, time, and the duration of the use of physical restraint or seclusion, a description of the incident including a description of the actions of the student before, during and after the incident, and the names and titles of the school staff and any law enforcement officers present at the time of the incident. The principal must send or hand deliver the written report to the student’s parent within three business days of the incident. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(4)(b). The second time that seclusion or physical restraint is used with a student with a disability within the same school year, the student's IEP team must meet as soon as practicable after the incident, but no later than 10 school days after the incident. The IEP team must review the IEP and revise it to ensure it includes appropriate positive behavioral interventions and supports and other strategies to address the behavior of concern based on a functional behavioral assessment (FBA) of that behavior. Wis. Stat. § 118.305(5).
The district acknowledged five incidents of physical restraint during the 2024-25 school year. These incidents took place on September 5, 2024, September 9, 2024, October 16, 2024, November 11, 2024, and March 5, 2025. District staff involved in these incidents had all received physical restraint training meeting state requirements. While the district documented phone contact with the parent within one day of the first four incidents, the district did not properly identify them as incidents of physical restraint. The district did not convene an IEP team meeting within 10 school days of the second incident of the 2024-25 school year. The district did not ensure that interventions, supports, and other strategies included in the IEP related to behaviors that resulted in the use of physical restraint were based on an FBA of that behavior.
The school principal and the student’s special education teacher met after each incident. Each time, they reviewed the student’s BIP and created behavior incident reports within the district’s school information system. The district could not provide information on whether any other district staff were present for the first four incidents but not part of the debriefing process. The district did not send or hand-deliver the first four written reports to the student’s parents within three business days of the incident. The district later emailed these behavior incident reports to the parents on March 14, 2025. The four reports identified the student’s name, date, time, the duration of the incidents, and descriptions of the student’s actions before the incidents. However, the reports failed to document the degree of force used or explain why staff believed there was any clear, present, and imminent risk to the physical safety of the student or others. The reports also failed to describe antecedent behaviors prior to the student’s dysregulation and did not fully identify the names and titles of the school staff present at the time of the incidents.
The fifth incident report included more detailed information on what occurred, including identification of the names of all staff present. The report described the student’s antecedent behavior and identified a moment that two staff restrained the student fearing the student, on the banister of a stairway, would follow through on a verbal plan to go over the banister and fall down the stairs. According to the report, staff released and re-initiated a hold after the student kicked them. Staff used a transport hold to move the student to a classroom that generally helped calm the student. The report indicated the student continued to physically attack, and staff secluded the student in the classroom twice. The student’s parent arrived, which ended the second episode of seclusion. After the parent took the student home, the student told the parent that one staff member had repeatedly shoved and pushed the student while seated forcefully enough that both the student and the chair fell to the floor. Two district staff met on the day of the incident to debrief and write an incident report. Two other staff present during the incident did not participate in the debriefing meeting. The district stated that staff hand-delivered the fifth incident report to the student’s other parent the following day.
The district improperly utilized seclusion and physical restraint with the student. After the incidents and prior to the department issuing this decision, the district conducted extensive corrective actions. The district provided additional seclusion and physical restraint training for staff involved in the student’s behavior incidents on March 11, 2025. The IEP team met often in the spring to discuss behavior and conducted a comprehensive reevaluation on June 3, 2025. District-wide, administrative staff revised the district’s procedures on seclusion and physical restraint. The district created a debriefing template and a dedicated form to help staff properly report incidents of seclusion and physical restraint. The form includes fields to prompt staff to provide information that fulfils the reporting requirements in state law. The district distributed seclusion and physical restraint guidance documents to all school principals and executive leaders. The district reviewed and revised its disciplinary framework to ensure that the framework included appropriate categories and definitions to describe incidents of physical aggression that do not include an element of intent. Based on the district’s corrective actions to date, no further corrective action is required.
Whether the district properly responded to the student’s parent’s request for a meeting of the student’s IEP team.
The parent of a student with a disability may request a meeting of the student’s IEP team at any time, and the district should grant any reasonable request for an IEP team meeting. If the district denies the parent's request for an IEP team meeting, the district must provide the parent with a notice of refusal in writing and include an explanation of why the district refuses to grant the request. 34 CFR § 300.503.
The department confirmed during investigation that the parent’s primary concern within the complaint was about the requirement that the district hold an IEP meeting following the second incident of seclusion or physical restraint during a school year. The department addressed that concern within the previous issue. Additionally, in response to the behavior incident on November 11, 2024, the principal and special education teacher met informally with the student’s parents on November 15, 2024. At that time, the parents and the district agreed to review and revise the student’s behavior and safety plan during the annual IEP meeting on December 3, 2024. The district also convened the student’s IEP team on March 20, 2025, March 30, 2025, April 16, 2025, May 8, 2025, May 20, 2025, and June 3, 2025, in response to parent concerns or a written parent request to review and revise the IEP. The district properly responded to the parent’s requests by scheduling and holding IEP team meetings frequently.
This decision is final for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) State Complaint process. These issues may be addressed through other dispute resolutions, including mediation and due process hearings. For more information, visit the department’s website at http://dpi.wi.gov/sped/dispute-resolution or contact the special education team at (608) 266-1781.
For questions about this information, contact dpispeddata@dpi.wi.gov (608) 266-1781