LONGVIEW, Wash. — Longview Public Schools administrators call it an “isolation booth” and photos of it are creating a Facebook firestorm. Some parents say they’re worried kids are being abused when they’re locked inside it at school. The isolation booth has been at Mint Valley Elementary School for the past four years. That’s because the school hosts a special education program for disabled students with behavioral issues. The booth is used to calm down some of the students when they’re at risk of hurting themselves or others…. The pictures show that from the outside, the booth is located in a storage area and has two peepholes at different heights. Inside, students can sit on the floor of the small padded room, and the ceiling has air holes for ventilation. The original Facebook poster, Ana Bate, a Longview mother, criticized its use as abusive, arguing children are locked in for crying or tapping on their desks.
My days as a teacher may be far behind me, but sometimes I find myself wondering what our classrooms are turning into. Yes, I realize that we live in a different world, and that means that some things need to be done differently than when I last stood in front of a class of unruly teenagers. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening at Mint Valley Elementary School.
Whether you call it a “box” or a “prison cell for children,” I can’t think of anything that could or should justify putting a child into a 16 sq. ft. padded cell with ventilation holes. If a parent were to discipline their children in a similar fashion, they’d likely (and rightfully) get a visit from their local child protection agency. When I first heard about the “isolation room,” my first thought was that this is a classic case of officially sanctioned child abuse. My next thought was to marvel at the laziness inherent in using the “isolation room.” Rather than determine how best to address a child’s particular behavioral issue, teachers can simply throw the miscreant in the isolation room and shut the door. Problem solved. No trying to deal with a behavioral issue, no determining the root cause of the problem. Just throw the child into a box and carry on.
As you might imagine, parents are not particularly happy about the isolation room.
State law allows Longview and other districts to have these padded rooms when students have outbursts. The state superintendent’s office says kids are only put inside if parents sign wavers beforehand and have Individual Education Plans for the student. Dawson says her son didn’t have an IEP, but he was put in there anyway.
“He wasn’t supposed to ever be near this room. They didn’t have authorization from me. They didn’t have my permission,” she said.
Dawson alleges her son was put in the room three years ago at Mint Valley against district and state policy. She says her son told her he was put into the room when he was in the fourth grade after misbehaving with food. He’s now in seventh grade at a different school.
“He said it was ‘the naughty room.’ And we said, what do you mean ‘the naughty room’? Well, it’s the room if you misbehave you’re sent to,” Dawson said.
There’s a divergence between parents and some experts on the necessity for, and the correctness of, using isolation rooms. Some experts will argue that isolation rooms are appropriate for special needs students who don’t respond to more conventional means of behavior management…and there may be something to that argument. That said, do we really want our schools to resemble minimum security prisons? Why are some parents only now learning about the isolation room? And what “crimes” fit the punishment?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the isolation room is an accepted method of discipline. The biggest problem would seem to be the lack of administrative oversight. Are there formal guidelines that explicitly spell out when, and for what behaviors, the use of an isolation room is appropriate? Is there a requirement that a teacher document each instance in which a student is placed in the isolation room? Are parents notified when a child is disciplined in this manner? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but in my mind those should be the baseline for using an isolation room, IF that method of discipline is deemed appropriate. I would argue that under no circumstances should a child, special needs student or not, should be forced into a 16 sq. ft. padded cell. It’s lazy, it’s abusive, and it sends the wrong message to students and the community as a whole. They’re students, not inmates.
For many students, school borders on being the moral equivalent of a minimum security prison. Is it really necessary (and/or appropriate) to actually to bring that belief to fruition?
