Mark Brostrom’s 11-year-old son was struggling in public school when his school district suggested what seemed like a better fit: a new specialized school near the family’s home.
Brostrom remembers thinking that the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students in Westminster could offer the flexibility that his son, who has autism, needed to thrive. A bright boy who scores well on tests, his son also sometimes responded to stress by destroying property or harming himself, his father said.
But Brostrom quickly became disillusioned with The ACES, as the school calls itself.
His son, whom Chalkbeat is not naming to protect his privacy, experienced multiple restraints, including one that the 11-year-old called “the crucifixion,” Brostrom said. The boy described being pinned to the floor on his back with staff members holding his arms and legs, a situation that his father said only made the boy struggle harder.
“It was so obvious that they did not have his safety in mind,” said Brostrom, who pulled his son out of the school after the boy came home with scratches and bruises. “Their intention was to get him to stop behaviors through fear and coercion.”
The ACES is what Colorado calls a facility school, a placement of last resort for students with intense behavioral, mental health, or special education needs whom public schools can’t or won’t serve. As the number of facility schools dwindled, state lawmakers in 2023 created a new, less clinical category called a “specialized day school” — opening the door for providers like The ACES.
Now, less than two years after opening, the school faces state sanctions and a potential loss of funding after complaints about how it physically restrains students, suggesting the state’s changes meant to grow the number of facility schools lacked adequate safeguards.
Colorado education officials put The ACES under a rare corrective action plan, and two of the state’s largest districts say they pulled all or some of their students out of the school this spring. Facility schools are funded directly by the state but districts also pay tuition to send children there.
“They have this way of doing things that is not something we’re going to accept in Colorado,” said Meryl Duguay, an advocate for students with disabilities who sounded the alarm with state education officials after visiting The ACES this spring.
Meryl Duguay is an advocate for students with disabilities and after visiting the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students she notified the the Colorado Department of Education about some concerns she has, May 28, 2026. (Kira Vos, Special to the Colorado Sun)To report this story, Chalkbeat spoke with four parents who either removed their children from The ACES or decided not to send them after going on a tour, as well as a former teacher who said she left because she disagreed with how The ACES treats students and staff.
Chalkbeat also interviewed advocates and attorneys in Colorado and Arizona, where The ACES was founded more than 30 years ago, and reviewed state documents and local police reports obtained via public records requests, as well as documentation provided by parents.
Officials with The ACES, including President Garen Austin, declined to be interviewed. The school provided written statements in response to Chalkbeat questions.
The school said many students are referred there because “they exhibit severe behavioral challenges” and may require “physical management interventions to prevent injury to themselves or others,” especially when they first arrive. Minor bruising may unintentionally occur when a student is restrained, The ACES said, and students are examined by a nurse afterward. The evaluation is documented and parents are notified of “any identified concerns.”
“While we cannot comment on individual student cases for privacy reasons, this school year we have occasionally found minor bruises and no significant injuries,” The ACES said.
The ACES said it responded “promptly and proactively” to the state corrective action plan by expanding training, strengthening policies and procedures, increasing supervision, and enhancing documentation and internal reviews.
“The ACES is committed to continuous improvement and to providing safe, high-quality educational services for students with significant and specialized needs,” the school said. “Our focus remains on helping students build the behavioral, emotional, and academic skills necessary to successfully return to their referring school district.”
The ACES was sued in Arizona over broken arms
The ACES, which has five locations in Arizona, was one of the first of the new category of facility schools approved by the Colorado Department of Education. An Arizona Department of Education spokesperson said The ACES is in good standing there.
But court records show that The ACES has been sued at least five times in Arizona, dating back to 2002. Four cases involve allegations that staff members broke students’ arms during restraints. Another alleges that staff members broke a student’s wrist.
All five Arizona lawsuits were either dismissed, settled, or forced to go through arbitration, court records show. The ACES has parents sign an agreement that says any dispute arising out of behavioral intervention must be “decided by binding arbitration only, not a judge or jury,” according to the lawsuits and advocates in Arizona.
The ACES required Colorado parents to sign the same agreement, copies provided to Chalkbeat by parents and advocates show.
The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is also investigating a complaint out of Arizona alleging that The ACES uses restraint too often and inappropriately, causing injuries, according to a copy of the complaint provided by Hope Kirsch, the attorney who filed it.
In approving The ACES as a facility school in Colorado, the state education department said it followed a “thorough process” in which The ACES submitted budget projections, curriculum information, staff licensure information, its educational policies and procedures, and more.
But Colorado didn’t look into The ACES’ operations in Arizona. “The rules do not include provisions for out-of-state investigations,” a department spokesperson said.
In Colorado, many students are placed at facility schools because the special education options in their local school districts can’t meet their needs. Michelle Abeyta’s 10-year-old grandson, who has autism, started at The ACES soon after it opened in the fall of 2024.
“Looking back, it all sounded really good on the surface,” Abeyta said. But as time went on, she said, “I started to see through the cracks of the facade.”
Her grandson started refusing to get out of bed or eat breakfast for fear of being sent to the school’s behavior intervention room, where he’d been made to stand silently facing the wall, she said.
Then this winter, he came home with fingerprint-sized bruises on his arms, said Abeyta, the boy’s legal guardian. He told his grandmother that he’d gotten into a fight and been restrained by school staff. Abeyta said there was no mention of it in his daily report from the school.
“I feel betrayed, I feel angry, and I feel lied to,” said Abeyta, who pulled her grandson out of the school in mid-April. “I am deeply saddened that … so many kids now have trauma, or further trauma, from a place that was supposed to help them.”
The former teacher at The ACES in Colorado, who asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution, said The ACES was the first school to train her to hold a student against the wall or on the floor, even though she’d worked in special education for years. Public records reviewed by Chalkbeat show other teachers told state officials similar things. The ACES said some of those comments were “simply inaccurate” and that its staff receive approximately 34 hours of crisis and behavior intervention training per year.
The teacher said she refused to restrain her students but did sometimes send them to the behavior intervention room. She said her last straw was early this year, when she saw a paraprofessional grab the wrist of a female student who’d walked out of the room. The next thing the teacher saw was the girl on the ground with four men holding her arms and legs and “someone else in her face telling her she needed to calm down,” she said.
“This is the first job I’ve had to leave midyear,” the teacher said. “I worry about those kids every day.”
A Westminster Police Department report from January, which Chalkbeat obtained in a public records request, describes an incident consistent with the teacher’s account.
While several staff members told the police that the restraint followed the regular protocol, one paraprofessional said his colleague had grabbed the girl from behind “almost like a tackle.” He described that approach as “a bit off.”
He said that while he and the others were holding the girl on the ground, she said “over and over” that the men were hurting her. He said the colleague who’d tackled her was “pushing down with more pressure than what they were trained to do.”
The police investigated the incident as misdemeanor child abuse but concluded there wasn’t probable cause to charge anyone with a crime, the report says.
According to the police report, the girl had been sent to the room for sleeping in class.
The ACES is facing scrutiny in Colorado
The paper trail of sanctions against The ACES in Colorado starts in January. After school districts raised concerns about The ACES unnecessarily restraining students with “unnecessary force,” the state education department ordered the corrective action plan.
The plan limited the use of restraint to when a student displays a weapon or demonstrates “a serious, probable, imminent threat of bodily harm.” It said The ACES can’t use restraint as punishment, can’t put “excess pressure” on a student’s chest or back, and must release a student within 15 minutes unless it’s unsafe.
The plan also required The ACES to submit documentation of any restraints to the department every day. A log obtained in a public records request shows The ACES reported more than 460 instances of “physical management” — which includes but isn’t limited to physical restraint of students — between January 27 and May 8. The ACES said only 25% of those instances were restraints. The school served 85 students during that time period, The ACES said.
The ACES was also required to send weekly documentation of the time students spent in the behavior intervention room. But The ACES told the state in late March that it had closed the room, according to an education department spokesperson.
In a statement, the ACES said it was complying with the corrective action plan but was “still awaiting specific details” about the concerns that led to it and an opportunity to respond to them.
“Our actions have shown measurable positive impact in reducing behavioral interventions and supporting increased academic engagement as we create the best possible learning environment for our students and staff,” the statement said.
In February, a parent complained to the state that The ACES improperly restrained their 12-year-old son. In late April, a Colorado Department of Education complaints officer agreed.
According to the written decision, the boy was using “inappropriate and aggressive language” toward a paraprofessional, who told him to face the wall. The boy said, “Make me.” The paraprofessional grabbed the boy by the wrist and held his arm behind his back, a move that was described in his daily report as a “standing therapeutic hold.”
But the state found that the hold was improper. The 12-year-old verbally challenging the paraprofessional wasn’t an emergency, and the boy didn’t pose any danger, the complaints officer wrote. It also wasn’t clear that the less restrictive method that the paraprofessional tried first — making the boy face the wall — had failed. In its written decision, the department reminded The ACES that restraint can’t be used as a punishment.
Following that incident, the family pulled their son out of The ACES, the decision says. The paraprofessional resigned after being told he would be fired, it says.
As a consequence for violating the rules, the state ordered all staff at The ACES to review the 13-page decision and the state rules by June 5. In a mid-May statement, The ACES said the consequence “was minimal and has been completed.”
In late April, the state education department sent The ACES another letter. It said that in the course of implementing the corrective action plan, the department received additional information about The ACES’ restraint practices, “staffing sufficiency,” and more. The “volume and nature” of the information showed “that a broader review is warranted,” Paul Foster, assistant commissioner for exceptional student services, wrote in the letter.
“Ultimately — in the event of continued non-compliance — we could withdraw state funding,” a department spokesperson said. The department is aiming to complete the review in 90 days.
The ACES said in a statement that it welcomes the opportunity to work with the state “to review past actions and develop strategies for further improvement.”
“Over the past several months, we have implemented numerous enhancements related to training, documentation, oversight, and incident review, and we remain committed to continuous improvement,” the school said.
In May, a spokesperson for the Douglas County School District said it had relocated all of its students out of The ACES “due to their restraint practices.”
A spokesperson for the Jeffco Public Schools, which owns the former elementary school building where The ACES is housed, said in mid-May it was “conducting a student-by-student review of all placements at the facility.” The district said it is not placing any new students at The ACES until the school has fully satisfied the state’s corrective action plan.
Neither Douglas County nor Jeffco school officials responded to questions about the size of their student enrollment at The ACES.
A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said in mid-May the district plans to keep using The ACES because it has no concerns. Denver said it has 16 students placed there.
Former state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, who sponsored the 2023 bill aimed at fixing the facility school shortage, said she doesn’t think more legislation is needed. She said it’s up to the state to enforce the rules in place and perhaps “button up” the facility school approval process.
“These are honestly our most vulnerable students,” said Zenzinger, who is now a Jefferson County commissioner. “That means they deserve a higher standard.”
What is restraint?Restraint is defined in Colorado law as any method used to involuntarily limit a student’s freedom of movement for one minute or longer. This often looks like physical “holds” performed by school staff members. Under state rules, restraint should:Only be used in emergency situations when less restrictive alternatives have failedNever be used as disciplineOnly be used for the time period necessaryNever be used with more force than necessary
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
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