Solitary for Kids

• Author: Lorelei Laird
• Pages: 18-19

National

Pulse

18 || ABA JOURNAL JULY 2018

The Docket

Solitary for Kids

Angry parents fi nd little legal recourse when schools

put their kids in ‘seclusion rooms’

By Lorelei Laird

The fi rst clue that

a teacher had been

shutting Cecilia and

Kevin Wilson’s son,

Ryleigh, into a school

closet appeared on

Face book .

The fi rst-grader frequently had

emotional outbursts in fall 2012.

Administrat ors at Mint Valley

Elementary School in L ongview,

Washington, often aske d the parents

to take him home. Dur ing a partic-

ularly bad incident on Halloween

that year, they arrive d at the school

to fi nd Ryleigh being restrained by

the principal, as the chi ld screamed

and hyperventilat ed. After that, the

Wilsons say Ryleigh resisted going

to school and became af raid to be

left alone.

They began to understa nd his

behavior when another Mint Valley

parent posted picture s of the school’s

“isolation booth” to Facebook in

November of that year. The booth

was a closet-size, l ightless, window-

less room with padded wa lls. The

pictures circul ated among Longview

parents, and when Ryleigh heard his

parents discussing it , he said he’d

been shut into it multiple times that

fall. On Halloween, it wa s because he

left his seat wit hout permission.

Washington state law at the time

permitted isolation room s to be used

only with parenta l permission as a

type of therapy for specia l education

students. Ryleigh was not in specia l

education, a nd the Wilsons hadn’t

even known the booth ex isted before

the Facebook pictures. They and

four other families, who al so were

unaware of this prac tice until the

Facebook posts, sued the dis trict in

2015.

The parents lost. Their attor ney

Tara Lawrence of Portland, Oregon,

says the plainti s were stunned by

the verdict. Advocate s for disabled

students say this kind of loss is

not unusual. Though isolation of

juveniles is forbidden in federally

funded mental health c are facilities,

as well as in federal pr isons, no

similar provision ex ists for schools.

State laws, if they ex ist at all, are a

patchwork. Some apply only to dis-

abled students, some to all students,

and other causes of act ion have had

only mixed success. Jur ies unfamiliar

with the needs of disa bled students

may defer to teachers’ judg ment.

“It’s hard to win these ca ses,

legally,” says Mary Gri n, a lawyer

and education pr ogram direct or

of the Washington Autism All iance

& Advocacy. “I’ve always thought

it was bias. But … this Mint Valley

thing was very d isturbing because

she still didn’t win when she took

out all the kids that had [disability

di a g n o s e s] .”

NOT A TIMEOUT

Disabled students are dispro -

portionately a ected by sec lusion

policies. According to the U.S.

Department of Education O ce for

Civil Rights , special-needs students

were just 12 percent of all students

in 2013-2014, but they represented

57 percent of those put into seclusion.

Black kids were also over represented;

they were 19 percent of the student

population w ith individuali zed edu-

cation plans, which were authori zed

by federal disability r ights law that

year, but were 36 percent of those

secluded.

Seclusion is not considered a

timeout or a moment in a quiet area.

The Department of Education defi nes

seclusion as i nvoluntary confi nement

in a space that the student is pre-

vented from leaving. Using that defi -

nition, a 2014 report from the U.S.

Senate Health, Education, L abor and

Pensions Committee said rese arch

has found there’s no therapeutic

benefi t t o the practice. State laws,

school policies and IEPs often autho-

rize seclusion as a las t resort in an

emergency or permit it as a way to

calm hig hly emotional students .

But in practice, the Senate r eport

found that it can be misused , with

students sent to isolation as a pun-

ishment, sometimes for long periods

or repeatedly over the course of a

seme ste r.

“Anecdotally, [we] just hear stories

of kids being secluded for shockingly

minor behaviors,” says Annie Aco sta,

director of fi scal a nd family support

policy for the Arc, a Washingt on,

D.C., disability rights organization.

As with Mint Valley, the Senate

report found that many schools

don’t tell the parents when they’re

using seclusion—even when the law

requires it. But like the Wi lsons,

those families w ill still notice the

e  e c t s .

“I think just the violation of one’s

autonomy and civil rights by bei ng

held against their wi ll is a really

traumatic exper ience for a lot of

kids,” says Acosta. Thi s may be par-

ticularly acute for chi ldren whose

disability prevents them f rom speak-

ing because they can’t tell a nyone.

Seclusion also subtract s from

instructiona l time, which can be

signifi cant if done frequently. It’s

also not a long-term solution to the

problem behavior.

In fact, Seat tle education attor-

ney Katherine Georg e says it can

backfi re.

“In some cases, removing the k id

to isolation in response to di sruptive

behavior encouraged the behav ior,

because it removed the kid from

whatever was botheri ng him or

her,” says George, who helped write

a Washington state law limit ing

the use of isolation and physical

restraints.

The legal recourse for those

families is lim ited, attorneys say.

Families may sue over violations

of state law, but 16 states permit

nonemergency sec lusion, according

to a report compiled by attorne y

and parent advocate Jessica Butler.

Disability rights l aws apply under

some circumstance s, but families

using the most directly appropr iate

law, the Individuals with Disabi lities