Tom Harkin: “I know that all Senators--I talked with them in the well--are concerned about discipline in classes. This Senator is no…”

“I know that all Senators--I talked with them in the well--are concerned about discipline in classes. This Senator is no different. I put two kids in public schools. We are all concerned about discipline in the classroom. But the Sessions amendment is the wrong approach. To segregate kids with disabilities and take them out and put them in a separate setting is not the right thing to do. The Sessions amendment would cease services to these kids with disabilities. That is not the right thing to do. There may be other things we can do to help provide for discipline in the classroom but not to segregate kids with disabilities. That is extreme. Those of us who have lived in families with siblings who were disabled and watched them taken from our families and our communities and sent halfway across the State, segregated from their friends, do not want to go back to that. That is what the Sessions amendment does.”