Michigan schools restrained or secluded students nearly 18,000 times during the 2024-2025 school year, and most of those students had disabilities. Now state Sen. Stephanie Chang is preparing to introduce legislation this fall that would ban seclusion outright and sharply limit when physical restraint can be used at all.
Chang's draft bill would prohibit seclusion entirely and allow restraint only in emergency situations essential to prevent imminent serious bodily harm, according to CBS News Detroit. The bill would also require districts flagged by the state for excessive restraint to file reduction plans and report publicly on how they intend to bring numbers down, including demographic data on which students are being restrained. Michigan school districts would additionally be required to train staff on how trauma affects student learning under the proposal.
Sunday Koffron Taylor, now about 50 years old, still recalls being dragged from her classroom and placed in a nurse's office as a first grader, the outlet reports. Her account echoes a pattern advocates have long pointed to: the students most often subjected to these interventions are disproportionately those with disabilities. Michigan Alliance for Families data covering 2017 to 2022 found that while students with disabilities made up just 13.5% of the state's public school population, they accounted for 94% of reported seclusions — 46,111 incidents — and 91% of reported physical restraints, totaling 40,676 incidents.
A Law Meant to Curb the Practice, Not Eliminate It
Current Michigan policy already limits physical restraint and seclusion to emergency situations where a student risks harming themselves or others, a framework the state put in place in 2017 to reduce the use of both tactics. Under that law, emergency physical restraint is capped at 10 minutes and emergency seclusion at 15 to 20 minutes unless staff summons additional personnel for support, according to the Michigan Legislature. The Michigan Department of Education also adopted a formal policy in March 2017 directing districts to lean on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports as a proactive strategy meant to head off crises before physical intervention becomes necessary.
Kirsten Myers supports decreasing emergency seclusion and restraint but opposes eliminating either tactic altogether during the most significant crises, per the CBS News Detroit report. That tension sits at the center of the debate: intermediate districts across the state, along with groups like the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators and the Special Education Leadership Network, offer optional training on when and how to use these interventions, and Kent and other districts provide instruction covering neuroscience, trauma, de-escalation, co-regulation and restorative debriefing. That optional training is starting its second year.
The Death That Changed the Conversation
The push for reform traces back in part to the 2020 death of Cornelius Frederick, a 16-year-old who died from asphyxiation after being physically restrained at a Kalamazoo youth facility. Kalamazoo County prosecutors authorized involuntary manslaughter and child abuse charges against three staff members at Lakeside Academy after Frederick was held down for more than nine minutes in a cafeteria, repeatedly saying he could not breathe before he died, according to ProPublica. His death led Michigan to revoke Lakeside Academy's license and tighten rules for youth residential facilities.
Five years later, federal investigators found a Michigan school district still relying heavily on the same tactics. The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into Montcalm Area Intermediate School District in 2023 and found the district had secluded or restrained students with disabilities more than 2,400 times between 2020 and 2023, including as punishment for routine issues like refusing to go to class. Federal officials determined the district violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Montcalm's Settlement and What It Requires
The Montcalm Area ISD Board voted unanimously in June 2025 to accept a settlement with the Department of Justice, agreeing to permanently ban student seclusion, eliminate isolation rooms and establish a dedicated intervention coordinator, according to The Daily News. The district fully cooperated with federal authorities throughout the multi-year investigation. That case has become a reference point for advocates pushing Chang's bill, who argue it shows the gap between what state law intends and what actually happens in classrooms.
A Michigan Department of Education task force that convened from December 2024 to April 2025, made up of advocates, department staff and special education administrators, recommended changing the law to clarify seclusion and restraint rules, aligning state and federal guidance, and focusing on prevention. The Michigan Advocates to End Seclusion & Restraint group, part of that effort, wants seclusion never used as a form of discipline and continues to push for additional safeguards for both students and staff. The Michigan Department of Education has advocated for legislative funding to train teachers on when and how to use these interventions, though it has not taken a formal position on Chang's draft bill. The department says it will collaborate with legislators, local districts and other groups to protect learners, and it would be the agency responsible for determining what constitutes excessive restraint under the proposed law.
Data Gaps Cloud the Full Picture
Michigan's MI School Data system provides downloadable seclusion and restraint figures, but it does not include students' grade, race or gender, limiting what researchers and families can learn about who is affected. Federal seclusion and restraint data is more than six months late, and the U.S. Department of Education is in the process of moving aspects of civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has raised serious concerns about the quality and accuracy of federal seclusion and restraint data, and a 2020 GAO audit of the Civil Rights Data Collection found that 70% of U.S. school districts reported zero incidents of restraint or seclusion — a result the watchdog agency concluded pointed to widespread misreporting rather than genuinely safe classrooms.
Nationally, restraint and seclusion tactics are estimated to occur roughly 2,300 times per school day, affecting more than 102,000 students each academic year, according to figures cited by U.S. Rep. Don Beyer. Bipartisan federal lawmakers reintroduced the Keeping All Students Safe Act in December 2025 to ban seclusion and prohibit life-threatening or breathing-restricting restraints, such as prone or supine holds, in any school receiving federal funds — an effort Congress has attempted in various forms since at least 2009. Chang's draft bill aims to align Michigan's definitions of seclusion and restraint with those federal standards, positioning the state legislation as a companion to the pending congressional push rather than a standalone fix.
