Students in the Jefferson County district in Kentucky were physically held down or confined to a room more than 4,400 times last school year—but the school system only correctly reported 174 of those instances to the state.
Superintendent Donna Hargens says the problem arose when schools reported problems to an internal database, not the state.
Restraint and seclusion may only be used in Kentucky if a student’s behavior poses imminent danger or physical harm to themselves or others.
Hargens said the district is looking at options to get the information corrected, including inputting data manually.