Nearly 400 Wake County students were physically restrained or secluded in school this past fall, according to newly released district data that lays out a stark picture of how often staff turned to those emergency measures.
The district reports that 371 students were held or isolated more than 1,000 times during the fall 2025 semester. Most of those students are elementary-age children with disabilities who are disproportionately Black. In all, staff used physical restraint 768 times and seclusion 288 times, both increases over the same stretch a year earlier.
Those figures appear in the semi-annual reporting package the district must file under a 2023 legal settlement and were set to go before the school board’s Student Achievement Committee on Tuesday afternoon. According to WRAL, the fall tally of 768 restraint episodes is up from 628, while seclusion incidents rose to 288 from 264 over the same period the previous year.
What the law requires
North Carolina law spells out what schools can and cannot do when it comes to “physical restraint” and “seclusion,” and it sets clear rules on reporting and notifying families. Under North Carolina General Statutes §115C-391.1, school staff must promptly notify a parent or guardian, generally by the end of the workday when reasonably possible, and must provide a written incident report within 30 days in specified situations…