06-12-2023, 10:27 AM
BY ANNIE MA OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AND MEREDITH KOLODNER OF THE HECHINGER REPORT
Updated 1:05 PM GMT+8, December 5, 2023
SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — Three times a week, on average, a police car pulls up to a school in Wicomico County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A student is brought out, handcuffed and placed inside for transport to a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.
Over the past eight years, the process has been used at least 750 times on students. Some are as young as 5 years old.
......
schools across the country are sending children to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluations in response to behaviors prompted by bullying or frustration over assignments. The ER trips, they say, often follow months, and sometimes years, of their needs not being met.
......
The practice isn’t just happening in Wicomico.
Recent data shows New York City schools still call police to take children in emotional distress to the emergency room despite a 2014 legal settlement in which they agreed to stop the practice.
A Kentucky school district was found to have used a psychiatric assessment on kids more than 1,000 times in a year. In Florida, thousands of school-aged children have been subjected to the Baker Act, the state’s involuntary commitment statute.
......
Baltimore City, for example, last year had 271 emergency petitions from schools
https://apnews.com/article/disability-ie...dfdc7393ca
Updated 1:05 PM GMT+8, December 5, 2023
SALISBURY, Md. (AP) — Three times a week, on average, a police car pulls up to a school in Wicomico County on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A student is brought out, handcuffed and placed inside for transport to a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.
Over the past eight years, the process has been used at least 750 times on students. Some are as young as 5 years old.
......
schools across the country are sending children to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluations in response to behaviors prompted by bullying or frustration over assignments. The ER trips, they say, often follow months, and sometimes years, of their needs not being met.
......
The practice isn’t just happening in Wicomico.
Recent data shows New York City schools still call police to take children in emotional distress to the emergency room despite a 2014 legal settlement in which they agreed to stop the practice.
A Kentucky school district was found to have used a psychiatric assessment on kids more than 1,000 times in a year. In Florida, thousands of school-aged children have been subjected to the Baker Act, the state’s involuntary commitment statute.
......
Baltimore City, for example, last year had 271 emergency petitions from schools
https://apnews.com/article/disability-ie...dfdc7393ca