Whoa, look at that.
You expect the unexpected when you
adopt eight kids. Loud, loud, active.
Messy sticky, stinky. But
Ray and Lori Carter say they
still didn't expect this.
Shawna filmed a few
seconds of it. Just because
I mean I don't know, he just lie.
I lost it and attacked me and he was
just like flight or flight livid
with I can't be at that school.
Trey was born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
It is impaired. His ability to
control his emotions and to learn
in second grade Forsyth County
placed him in a special education
classroom at Kelly Mill Elementary.
It didn't go well
on day one. I think he was restrained.
To calm, trace, fight or flight tendencies,
teachers used physical restraints. What
we're trying to do is apply
physical touch to get that child
to calm down and deescalate.
That's Jennifer Caracciolo,
a spokesperson for the district.
According to school reports
provided by Trace parents,
staff restrained trade 20
times in his first month,
Trey ended up at Children's
Healthcare of Atlanta,
depressed and anxious
for threatening. Kill himself
and are threatening self
harm and harm to the teacher.
But as soon as he returned to class
the restraints started again.
Each only lasted a few minutes.
The reports outlined the danger pushing,
punching or climbing the door,
hoping to leave the room.
Trey's mom believes he couldn't do
the school work and lacked maturity
to deal with his frustration.
Try harder is something that I can't
hear because he's been told to try
harder and that just jacks up his.
Anxiety well, I mean you know if
you had a wheelchair would you
tell somebody try harder to walk?
Trey has a brain injury.
He has an invisible disability and
and and it needed to be accommodated.
It almost always happened in the
morning, but the reports don't say
what triggered the aggression.
I get it. We don't always.
We missed some cues. But that's
an awful lot of cues to miss.
Doctor Daniel. Crimmins is an
emeritus professor at Georgia State,
a clinical psychologist that,
for more than a decade can result in the
same outcome as them has helped train
schools on ways to avoid restraints.
He says restraints aren't generally harmful,
but they don't help either.
Burning up time and resources.
How do we switch that equation from
them being invested to reacting
to the problem to to preventing
the problem and and teaching?
Skill that might teach that might
help this kid in the future.
According to the Office
of Civil Rights that year,
Forsyth used restraints at least
three times more than any of the
four larger metro school districts.
For perspective, Forsyth used restraints
more than 900 times last school year.
After that, the district with the
highest use was Paulding County.
They used restraints 300 times.
Crimmins says the other counties aren't
being honest in their reporting,
or Forsyth has a distinct culture.
Or how it handles students
with special needs.
If I am being restrained,
the message is that I'm truly
that I'm being disapproved of.
If it's happening that often,
that's pretty heavy burden
of disapproval they'll be
carrying around, Carajillo says.
The use of restraints spiked in
2017 when Trey attended in person,
and there's since been a
philosophical shift. We're
very data-driven.
We have conversations about,
OK, why is this data happening?
Do we need to provide more training?
It's those conversations that led more
than half of the district schools
to now use PBI SA program to focus
on supporting positive behavior.
It's also tracking students.
Behavior so we can see if there's triggers
in the past five years,
Forsyth added 18% more
special education students,
but its use of restraints increased 5%.
Cracchiolo says it's a sign
parents believe the district
is doing things right,
and sometimes that still means
physical restraint. We've
obviously evolved it over the years to
make sure that we're providing the best
support for the students and their families,
but it's a practice that has worked for us.
It's not a practice that has worked for Trey.
Restraints didn't cause his problems,
but his parents say they have made
it almost impossible to get him
back into a traditional classroom.
Trey's mom let us listen in on
a team meeting before Trey left
a residential treatment program
stemming from this attack.
Some fear about returning back to that
school, and he talked a little bit
about the restraints that happened
restraints still a fear.
Five years later,
Trey never went back to Kelly
Mill after second grade because
his parents said the district
wouldn't let him change schools.
So instead he has bounced
between private schools,
home based classes and
psychiatric hospitals.
I don't know what 20 something restraints.
The first few weeks of school
and going inpatient does to
a kid that's 7-8 years old.
With a lower IQ and fetal alcohol
syndrome that already had trauma
history like I don't know.