Bill requiring cameras in special ed classrooms fails again

By JILLIAN ATELSEK

jatelsek@newspost.com

A bill that would have required cameras in special education classrooms across Maryland failed in Annapolis for the third year in a row, but Frederick County may still pursue the matter locally.

House Bill 226 would only have applied to self-contained special education classrooms, which are designated specifically for students with special needs and are staffed with certified special educators.

Proponents of the bill said it would protect vulnerable students, who often are unable to speak up if they experience abuse or neglect at school. They also argued that the footage could protect instructors from false allegations of misconduct.

In its original form, the bill called for 50% of the state’s public self-contained classrooms to install a camera during the 2022-23 school year and the other half to install one the next year. Lori Scott, vice president of The Arc Maryland and a leading advocate for the legislation, said House delegates “murdered the bill” by changing it to a pilot program for just 10 schools before passing the amended version 128-4. That stripped-down version failed to get a hearing once it crossed over to the state Senate, Scott said. After similar disappointments in the two previous legislative sessions, she told the News-Post on Tuesday she was unsure whether she would push to introduce the bill again.

“I don’t think the cameras are going to be acceptable right now with this legislature,” Scott said. “We have to re-strategize.”

Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince George’s County, chaired the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affair Committee this session, which oversaw the amended House of Delegates bill once it crossed over. Both time constraints and concerns about the bill’s potential impact on teachers influenced his decision not to give it a hearing, he told the News-Post earlier this month.

“My committee members have not been at my door saying, ‘Please put that on the next list,’ ” Pinsky said in an interview shortly before the legislative session ended. “There are a number of bills we just haven’t gotten to because of time and capacity.”

Plus, Pinsky argued that pieces of classroom footage “could be seen in isolation and be taken out of context” to unfairly persecute teachers. He said school principals could observe classrooms “anytime they want” and that abusive behavior would be “seen in a pattern” — making it unnecessary to use recording devices to prove a single incident.

“You can’t hide your nature of how you instruct or address children,” Pinsky said. “In many cases, not just administrators but other staffers know what happens in a classroom.”

The Maryland State Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, took a publicly neutral stance on House Bill 226.

Frederick County Board of Education President Brad Young said (See CAMERAS A14) “

You can’t hide your nature of how you instruct or address children. In many cases, not just administrators but other staffers know what happens in a classroom.

MD. SEN. PAUL PINSKY,

D-Prince George’s County

(CAMERAS from A1) Frederick County Public Schools was still considering installing cameras in special education classrooms, but he wasn’t sure how far along the conversations were. The failure of House Bill 226 means any decision on the matter would be subject to negotiations with unions representing district employees, he said.

“But to my understanding, it’s something that we want to pursue either way,” Young said.

The school board voted to officially support the legislation at a January meeting, shortly after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed widespread misuse of restraint and seclusion against special education students across FCPS.

At that same meeting, FCPS Interim Superintendent Mike Markoe said he’d look into the issue regardless of what happened to the state bill.

“I don’t think we need to have the legislation to do something that’s right for our students,” Markoe said.

Scores of parents and advocates from across the county and state submitted testimony on House Bill 226. Dustin Bane, the parent of a nonverbal autistic child enrolled in FCPS, became a staunch advocate for the legislation after he said his son returned from school one day in 2019 with a new 4-inch bruise on his back.

“To this day, I have no idea how this occurred,” Bane wrote in a letter to the Maryland General Assembly, the state legislature. “I experience fear, anxiety and even shame for sending him back to school each day without knowing what happened and whether he’s being abused.”

Other parents and disability rights groups shared similar sentiments in their testimonies. The bill stipulated that footage could be erased after three months if the school didn’t receive a request to review a certain tape. The district would have been required to erase footage after six months unless it pertained to an ongoing investigation.

But the bill also received its share of opposition. The Maryland Association of Boards of Education argued that the costs of maintaining and reviewing the footage would be unsustainable for many districts and that the cameras could compromise student privacy regulations.

The Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union also opposed the bill, writing that while its “intent was laudable,” the cameras could exacerbate existing disparities in school discipline figures.

Students in Maryland with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), for special education, make up 23% of school-based arrests despite comprising just 12% of the student population, ACLU representatives wrote in their testimony. The bill “encourages greater use of segregation of students with disabilities,” they wrote.

A disability rights group based in Texas — which in 2015 became the first state to require cameras in special education classrooms if parents or staff members requested them — submitted testimony to the Maryland General Assembly saying cameras had not increased exclusionary discipline among special education students.

“There have been countless times when camera footage vindicated an educator or a student or created a learning opportunity on how to better handle crisis intervention in the future,” the testimony read. “We have not seen any of the potential downsides of cameras that we feared.”

Georgia and West Virginia have laws similar to Texas’, passed in 2016 and 2019, respectively.

Scott said she and her colleagues may work to introduce other Maryland bills aimed at curbing abuse in special education classrooms in the future, but she wasn’t sure what form they would take.

One possibility, she said, was working to bolster data reporting requirements to get a better picture of how often students with disabilities are disciplined in relation to their peers.

“I don’t know how we move forward,” Scott said, “but we have to do something.”

Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek

One of three seclusion rooms are shown at the new Rock Creek School in Walkersville. The rooms are no longer in use.

Staff file photo by Bill Green