Miss. District Halts Handcuffing of Students

Jackson, Miss., public schools will no longer handcuff students to poles or other objects and will train staff at its alternative school on better methods of discipline, reports the Associated Press.

Mississippi's second-largest school district agreed Friday to the settlement with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had sued over the practice of shackling students to a pole at the district's Capital City Alternative School.

The suit was filed in June 2011 by Jeanette Murry on behalf of her then-16-year-old son, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It said staffers routinely restrained students for hours for offenses as minor as dress code violations, forcing them to eat lunch while chained to a stair railing and to shout for help when they needed to go to the bathroom.

Read the full Associated Press story.