Wisconsin schools reported nearly 6,000 instances of seclusion and nearly 7,000 occurrences of physical restraint during the 2021-22 school year, according to the latest data available from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Among those instances, 1,920 students at 32 percent of Wisconsin’s schools were secluded and 2,856 students at 44 percent of the state’s schools were physically restrained, DPI data shows. The data does not indicate whether these incidents occurred simultaneously.
Students with individualized education programs, or IEPs, comprised 79 percent of all seclusion incidents and 76 percent of all physical restraint incidents reported for the 2021-22 school year, according to DPI.
Children in elementary schools were also involved in a higher percentage of instances of seclusion and/or physical restraint than other levels of school.
“Reading this report and seeing these numbers can be difficult, but that is nothing in comparison with the emotional difficulty these numbers represent in the lived experiences of students and staff,” State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly said in a written statement.