Jonathan King Would Have Been 18 Years Old

by Kristina Chew

categories: Education, Legal

Published July 28, 2009 @ 02:05PM PT

Jonathan King died almost 5 years ago, on November 15, 2004. He was 13 years old and this past July 13th would have been his 18th birthday.

Jonathan died at school. He hung himself with a rope that teachers had given him to hold up his pants as he habitually didn't wear a belt. The July 27th Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a long article about Jonathan and about the lack of regulation of Georgia's "psychoeducational" schools. There are 24 such facilities in Georgia and some 5,600 students in them who are "emotionally disturbed, autistic or so brain-injured that regular schools can’t control their behavior."

Jonathan was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarden and "began a regimen of prescription medications." By sixth grade, the school district decided to place him at the Alpine School due to his being "disruptive."

Jonathan was in eighth grade in the fall of 2004. He never complained about school, his parents say, never told them anything other than he had occasionally gone to “time out.”

The Kings’ lawyers, though, eventually learned the extent of Jonathan’s understatement.

A log book for Alpine’s seclusion room showed Jonathan was confined part or all of 15 school days between August and November, sometimes twice in one day. Over two consecutive days in October, Jonathan spent 15 hours in seclusion. The first day, Jonathan ripped the hem from his shirt and wrapped it around his neck in a suicidal gesture. The next day, the log says, he was “threatening to kill himself.”

Rather than using the seclusion room only as a last resort to get the boy under control, the log suggests it became a place where teachers sometimes placed Jonathan for minor infractions. On Oct. 26, 2004, for instance, Jonathan was “cussing, argumentative and disruptive during testing; demanding water bottle be filled; swearing; [and refusing] to follow instructions,” the log says. He spent seven hours, 10 minutes in the seclusion room that day. Ten days later, on Nov. 5, Jonathan was locked up for five hours, 50 minutes after he “refused to accept feedback.”

Alpine never told Jonathan’s parents about any of the seclusions. It didn’t have to. In court papers, Alpine contends the state’s lack of regulation gave it implicit authority to use seclusion as it saw fit.

The "lack of regulation" meant that the school could just use such practices "as it saw fit," without spelling out under what circumstances Jonathan would be placed in seclusion, and without indicating an educational plan so that he would not have to be in such a place?

Jonathan's case sounds too many familiar notes to me. My son has not been placed in a timeout room, but he has been restrained in more than one New Jersey public district. The kind of "psychoeducational" facility that Jonathan died in has been suggested for my son. Certainly many things about the staffing and the training that staff receive at the schools here differs, but the use of restraints and timeout rooms are not at all unheard of.

Jonathan could talk more than my own son, and yet he was still unable to communicate what was really going on to his parents. Besides medication, what educational and behavioral methods were used to help him in the classroom? What had not happened in his education? And what kind of a society are we that allows children with disabilities to be placed in what are in essence cells with bars on the window and locks the door?