Urgent Education Advocacy Alert for Parents in New York State

NYSED enacted these new regulations even though they admit that there is no research supporting the use of most of these techniques. There is certainly no research validation for using most of these techniques in public school settings.

There are already at least 23 school districts in NYS currently recommending the use of aversive behavioral interventions for disabled students, and probably many more already using aversive behavioral interventions without documenting what they have been doing to disabled children.

These regulations need to be approved again at the Board of Regents meeting scheduled for September 11-12 in Albany. We all need to take action now. You have an opportunity to respond to these new regulations. See the State's notice at how to provide feedback and deadlines for providing feedback.

You can read the new regulations online at or get the pdf version at

To give you an idea how bad these regulations are, as per the new approved regulations:

1. Corporal punishment is barred -- except that a teacher can apparently use restraint and physical force on a child to protect the school's property or to remove the child or stop the child from interfering with a school function - even if the property is a 3-cent crayon and even if what the child is doing is a symptom of their disability (e.g., perseveratively asking questions or repeatedly tapping the crayon on the desk).

2. Children can be put in time out rooms with no specific requirements as to the staff training required for the person who monitors the child while the child is in the room, no medical buttessment to see if time out would be dangerous for the child, no psychological buttessment to determine if time out would be traumatic for the child, and no limit on how long a child can be put in time out for.

3. School personnel can use "aversive behavioral interventions" such as painful electric skin shock if they get a waiver to use it for the child. Other "aversives" that they may now use if they obtain a "waiver" include putting a child out in the cold without adequate clothing, withholding essential hydration or nutrition, using noxious sprays in the child's face or making them inhale noxious scents, depriving them of sleep, and using "deep muscle squeezes" or "strangling."

4. School districts can obtain waivers to use "aversive behavioral interventions" for a specific child by applying to the Commissioner of Education's office, who will send the request to an "expert panel" who will review the student's records. The panel then advises the Commissioner and the district, but it is up to the child's Committee on Special Education (CSE) or Committee on Preschool Special Education (CPSE) to decide whether to grant itself the waiver. Thus, the very same people who may have failed to order helpful diagnostic evaluations or related services may now approve the use of aversive behavioral interventions on a child. The new regulations do not mandate that any child being recommended for aversive behavioral interventions must have a psychiatric evaluation or a neurological evaluation at public expense before the CSE or CPSE can recommend or implement an aversive behavioral intervention. The new regulations do not require regular monitoring by medical and doctoral-level mental health professionals to insure the child's health and safety.

5, School personnel can use restraints (mechanical) on children as part of a planned behavior intervention program. There is no time limit on how long the child or teen can be kept in mechanical restraints.

Disabled children and teens require more protections when aversive behavioral interventions are implemented in school settings, not fewer protections. At the very least, NYSED should have incorporated all relevant federal protections concerning the use of restraints and seclusion (what NYS calls time out rooms). It didn't.

All relevant federal policies and commissions firmly state that restraints, time out, and 'aversives' should only be used for genuine safety emergencies, they should be used with significant medical and psychological-psychiatric protections, and they should never be used as punishment. NYSED's new regulations do exactly the opposite by specifically allowing these techniques to be used as planned consequences for non-emergency situations and by failing to require even minimum health and safety protections.

To read the entire action alert, with background on why NYSED did this and suggestions for how to write to your Regent and NYSED, please see the full alert at: