Father of boy whose legs were broken at school calls for JCPS takeover

Meanwhile, more questionable statistics for the district continue to pile up

As the Kentucky Board of Education prepares to hear an appeal of a recommendation from Kentucky Commissioner of Education Wayne Lewis for a state takeover of the troubled Jefferson County Public School System (JCPS), multiple sources such as the Courier-Journal report that the “Father of boy whose legs were broken at school calls for JCPS takeover.”

The letter comes from Brian D. Long, father of Brennan Long, who as a 16-year old student at the special Binet School in Louisville had both of his femurs shattered by a school employee in 2014. The letter went to Commissioner Lewis and reportedly to other state education leaders, as well.

The Courier’s article provides interesting discussion, including such revealing quotes from the letter as:

"Based on Brennan's experience and JCPS' response, it is hard to (imagine) how JCPS would be able to make systemic changes that are necessary to fulfill the findings of the State Audit."

However, for unknown reasons the Courier’s online article does not include or link to the actual letter. BIPPS thinks the public deserves to see the full letter, and with permission from Mr. Long you can do that just by clicking here.

Meanwhile, Insider Louisville reports that the use of physical restraints, the same issue that led to Brennan Long’s life-threatening injuries in 2014, is on the rise statewide.

Unfortunately, the exact amount of the increases in restraint incidents for Jefferson County won’t likely ever be known because the district seriously under-reported these incidents for years until reporters in Louisville discovered the problem. However, statistics for 2017 in the Insider report show that statewide outside of Jefferson County there were 3,631 total incidents. Inside JCPS, a total of 4,239 incidents took place. According to data in the Kentucky School Report Card for JCPS, the total student membership in the district was 96,774 in 2016-17 while it was 656,588 across the entire state. Putting all of this together, JCPS enrolled 14.7 percent of Kentucky’s total public school population in 2016-17 but in the same school term it logged over half of the total restraint incidents, 53.9 percent of them.

Also, this new information about restraints comes three years after the Long incident occurred, raising still more questions about what is really happening in Louisville at a time when this issue has moved front and center as one of the major factors of consideration regarding the state takeover of the district.