A bill that would require video cameras to be placed and periodically reviewed by administrators in special education classrooms throughout West Virginia advanced from the Senate Education Committee on Thursday afternoon.
The need for Senate Bill 261 became clear last fall when Trenton Bowden, 9, was abused in his special education classroom at Holz Elementary School in Charleston, WV. If there had not been video evidence of the abuse in the classroom, it may never have been discovered.
The parents of Trenton, Craig and Beth Bowden, testified before the committee this afternoon. They described multiple instances seen on the video of their son and other students being thrown to the floor by their hair, slapped, and verbally abused. Many of the students are nonverbal or cognitively delayed, and thus are incapable of reporting the abuse themselves.
The bill was amended three times by the committee in an effort to make it stronger.
Senator Grady (R-Mason, 04) successfully amended the bill to require a specific school administrator or county designee to review video footage of these classrooms for no less than 15 minutes, no less than every 90 days.
Senator Tarr (R-Putnam, 04) successfully amended the bill to take out language saying the video would be deleted after 90 days, allowing the school to keep the video if the technology allowed.
Finally, Senator Karnes (R-Randolph, 11) successfully amended the bill to require schools to keep the footage for 365 days. Karnes noted that there could potentially be some cost to schools to do this, but pointed out that the cost of storage with this technology is often fairly minimal compared to the overall cost and therefore, he did not see the amendment as an impediment for the schools to comply with the bill.
The legislation now heads to the floor for consideration by the full Senate.
