Oklahoma schools use ‘seclusion rooms’

"A controversial practice of shutting children alone in small closet-like rooms to control their behavior has led Oklahoma parents to withdraw their children from school, seek police intervention and take legal action," Jennifer Palmer reports for Oklahoma Watch.

School officials give the rooms benign-sounding names like “blue room,” “cool-down room” or “de-escalation room” and say they’re intended to provide a healthy temporary separation. But many parents and child advocates say the practice is like being locked in a closet, and some liken it to solitary confinement in prison. Students placed in the room often have special needs. 

One father says his special-needs son was placed in a closet for timeout a dozen times in the first two weeks of classes at a Mustang elementary school. In the small Coal County district of Cottonwood, parents say the school placed their son in the narrow “blue room” multiple times for not minding his teacher when he was just 3 years old. Lawsuits have been filed over schools in Cottonwood, Ardmore, Edmond, and likely elsewhere.

Read the whole thing here.