It is without question that students with special needs may not be excluded from school based upon their handicap. However, the safety of other students may be at stake in some situations regarding students who are emotionally or behaviorally disturbed.
There was a specific situation that occurred in my classroom that put both regular ed students and a student who had an IEP for a learning disability as risk. With out anyone's knowledge, one of my IEP students had brought a cigarette lighter to school. During one of my classes, he flicked the lighter on under another students arm. I saw the flash of light, and immediately knew what he had done. I looked at him and asked him to go to his administrator's office and stay there until I came down at the end of the period. I also had a paraprofessional in my room (because of the number of special ed students in the room this period) and I asked him to walk the student to his administrator and tell the administrator what had happened. The para as well as most of the students in the classroom did not see the incident. Previous to this, the student had never had a problem in my class or any of his classes this year. He stated that he was not aware that a lighter was a weapon and now realized he should not have brought it to school. The student was suspended from my class for 3 days and given in school suspension and several after school detentions. If this had been a regular education student, I feel the consequences would have been much more severe, but he was protected by his classification.
Based on this situation and others, It is my opinion that special education students who are emotionally or behaviorally disturbed should be placed in a classroom where there is constant supervision and low teacher to student ratio's. These students need to be reminded of school rules and acceptable behavior more often than traditional regular education students.
