This restraint technique left a Fort Worth student dead. Some lawmakers want to outlaw it

Lawmakers, advocates and parents of students with disabilities gathered at the Texas State Capitol Monday morning to call for tighter restrictions on the use of dangerous physical restraints in schools and more training for teachers who work with disabled students.

Among other proposals, advocates called for an end to the use of prone and supine restraints, which place students either face-up or face-down on the floor. Experts say those techniques are especially dangerous because they can restrict breathing. In 2021, a student in the Fort Worth Independent School District died after school staff members performed a prone restraint on him.

Rep. Mary Gonzalez, D-El Paso, said lawmakers have a responsibility to close gaps in state law and public policy that leave families no recourse when vulnerable students are harmed. Gonzalez authored a bill that would ban the use of prone and supine restraints in schools.

“We can’t hear story after story and say that we don’t have a responsibility to do something,” she said.

Fort Worth student died after prone restraint

Xavier Hernandez, 21, was a student at Boulevard Heights, a school in the Fort Worth school district for students with disabilities. Hernandez had autism and schizophrenia.

On March 1, 2021, staff members at the school restrained Hernandez after he tried to run out of his classroom. A teacher’s assistant, Toras Hill, told detectives that he and teacher Brad Webb took Hernandez to the floor and held him on his stomach, according to police investigative documents obtained by the Star-Telegram through an open records request.

Hill told police that school staff members pinned Hernandez’s arms to the floor because he sometimes bit his hands during restraints. At some point during the restraint, Hernandez made a gurgling sound. Hill and Webb turned him onto his side, at which point they noticed his lips were turning blue. School staff members called an ambulance, which took Hernandez to John Peter Smith Hospital, where he died later that day.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled that he died of the combined effects of physical restraint and chlorpromazine, an antipsychotic medication that’s sometimes used as a sedative for aggressive behaviors in children and teenagers.

Hill told the Star-Telegram in November that teachers at Boulevard Heights had an understanding that they would need to restrain Hernandez anytime he got up to run out of the classroom, because no one knew where he would go. School staff members restrained Hernandez about two to three times a week, Hill said, usually on his stomach. Hill said he was unaware the maneuver was illegal.

Homicide detectives from the Fort Worth Police Department investigated Hernandez’s death but didn’t make an arrest. The state prohibition on the use of prone and supine restraints is a part of the Texas Education Code, which is enforced by the Texas Education Agency. A TEA spokesman said an investigation is ongoing.

Restraint ban represents legal gray area

Steven Aleman, an attorney with Disability Rights Texas, told the Star-Telegram in November that the ban on prone and supine restraints represents a legal gray area in Texas: the state education code bans the maneuvers in most cases, but a separate section allows them in emergency situations, theoretically allowing a district that used the restraints regularly to claim that its staff members only did so when an emergency arose.

Gonzalez’s bill, which is House Bill 133, would prohibit district employees from placing students in prone or supine restraints under any circumstances. It would also bar district employees from taking students to the floor except when dealing with a medical emergency.

Gonzalez said lawmakers need to find a balance between supporting teachers and keeping the most vulnerable students safe. The state needs to insist on better accountability and transparency from schools that work with students with disabilities, she said.

A separate House bill, filed by Rep. Lacey Hull, R-Houston, would bar district employees from using handcuffs or chemical irritants to subdue a student age 10 or younger. Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, filed identical legislation in the Senate.

Hull said the use of restraints disproportionately affects students with disabilities, and the use of handcuffs can often escalate an already-volatile situation. By stating explicitly in state law that teachers can’t use handcuffs or chemical irritants against students, Hull said she hopes to prevent vulnerable students from being traumatized at school.

Advocate calls for clarification of acceptable force

As it’s written, the state’s prohibition on the use of prone and supine restraints outside of emergency situations doesn’t lay out a punishment for violating it, making it difficult for families to hold anyone accountable when a student is injured or killed during a restraint.

During Monday’s news conference, Jolene Sanders-Foster, advocacy director for the nonprofit Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, called on lawmakers to revise the state’s penal code to clarify what constitutes an acceptable use of force against a student by a teacher. She also said the penal code should be revised to allow for teachers to be held accountable for actions taken against students. The coalition gets regular reports from parents across the state about teachers and other school staff members using inappropriate levels of force against students, she said.

“We hear regularly from parents about hitting, dragging, pushing, pinching and biting. Yes, biting,” she said.

Sanders-Foster said the state moved in the right direction in 2015, when lawmakers passed a bill requiring districts to place surveillance cameras in certain self-contained special education classrooms at the request of parents. Now, she said the state should update that statute to require that districts keep surveillance video on file for a longer period. In many cases, she said, parents aren’t notified of an incident involving their children in a timely manner. By the time families have a chance to request surveillance video, it’s often been deleted, she said.

Mistreatment at school left Houston girl traumatized, mom says

Jeanna TenBrink, a mother from the Houston area, said her daughter, Leah, suffered mistreatment in a self-contained classroom for students with disabilities. Leah, now 16, has autism and is mostly nonverbal, TenBrink said.

Before the abuse began, Leah was “a vibrant, silly aspiring athlete who loved to try new foods and visit new places,” she said. But when Leah was in middle school, TenBrink noticed she began coming home with unexplained bruises, scratches and bite marks. TenBrink began receiving calls from Leah’s school asking her to pick her daughter up early, because she was having major meltdowns. Leah would scream and cry when her bus pulled up to the school, and her behavior began to change at home, as well, TenBrink said.

Because Leah was unable to tell her what was going on at school, TenBrink struggled to find out what the problem was, she said. Later, she learned that school staff members were often placing Leah in a dark bathroom by herself for long periods and frequently performed physical restraints on her. After repeated attempts, TenBrink got access to a heavily edited video that showed her how teachers were treating her daughter.

“I witnessed teachers cursing, provoking and demeaning my daughter. I watched male students kick and violate her privacy in the bathroom,” TenBrink said. “I witnessed two teachers hold Leah face-down on the floor with both arms behind her back as her legs lifted in the air as she struggled to breathe.”

Years later, the effects of the mistreatment Leah suffered linger, TenBrink said. The smiling, vibrant girl is gone, she said. Now, Leah is easily frightened and quick to anger, and mostly likes to be alone, she said. The rest of the family continues to struggle, as well, she said. they no longer trust the school system and have been left overwhelmed with feelings of betrayal and regret, she said. Meanwhile, the two teachers who mistreated her daughter are still teaching in the district, she said. She worries that the kind of abuse Leah suffered will continue to go on without action at the state and local level.

“Leah has the right to learn in an environment free from physical, verbal and emotional abuse,” she said. “We can start by ending harmful and dangerous restraints.”