INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A mother of a child with special needs on Wednesday said a surveillance camera requirement would help her if she ever thought something was wrong.

The House Education Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to require surveillance cameras in seclusion and life skills areas within special education classrooms. Those are areas where children can be isolated from the rest of the class if they are having behavioral problems. The cameras would have to record audio as well as video. Schools would be required to retain recordings for at least 60 days and make them available upon request by a parent or teacher.

Jade Presnell has a 10-year-old son with Down Syndrome. She said this makes it difficult to communicate with him about any problems he might have had in class. Presnell said her son’s school has an excellent special education program, but she still would rest much easier if she could see and hear what’s happening at any time.

“Most parents, their children come home, they tell them about their day. If something bad happened, they let them know,” she said, “but for us, we often have to do a lot of digging.”

Bill author Rep. Becky Cash, R-Zionsville, said she wrote the bill in response to several recent incidents in which children with special needs were improperly restrained in special education classrooms. She said her bill would support students as well as teachers and instructional aides.

Presnell, who is a licensed social worker specializing in behavioral health and mental illness, told lawmakers she has seen special education problems firsthand in her work. While working with a rural school district last year, she said she saw two students being put in mechanical restraints unnecessarily.

Presnell told News 8 that in her experience, problems in special education classrooms stem less from individual wrongdoing than from a lack of school resources or expertise. She said the surveillance video could be a useful training tool for teachers.

School representatives said they support the idea behind the bill but they fear it creates an unfunded mandate. Dr. Robert Taylor, the executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, said there’s a risk that rural schools, in particular, might have to resort to shifting existing security cameras around, leaving blind spots in public areas. Cash said schools can apply for grants to cover the cost of installing the cameras or use their existing infrastructure budgets.

The bill now goes to the full House for further consideration.