Minnesota disabilities advocates push back on plan to restore school seclusion rooms
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Disability rights activists applauded Minnesota’s move two years ago to ban the use of school seclusion rooms to discipline children in kindergarten through third grade. On Thursday, they returned to the Capitol to fight a legislative effort to lift that ban.
Seclusions are forced isolations, and in Minnesota 100 percent of the children put into school seclusion rooms are students with disabilities, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. About 74 percent of all seclusions in Minnesota in 2023 involved children younger than 10.
A measure in the state Senate would give districts the option of using seclusion in kindergarten through third grade with parental permission as a last resort disciplinary method.
Disability rights and supporters of maintaining the ban argue seclusions don’t help anyone.
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“We have to ask ourselves, do we really support people with disabilities and students with disabilities if we will not stand up for the basic human right to not be locked in a box … at 6,” Rep. Kim Hicks, DFL-Rochester, told reporters. “What are we going to do to keep our children safe? What have we decided should be prioritized?”
Research shows seclusion does not improve a student’s behavior. The state Education Department has recommended an “urgent end” to seclusion for all children by 2026.
Seclusion rooms are not sensory rooms. Sometimes they are padded rooms with windows, but often they are closets or small rooms with no lights, said Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid attorney Jessica Webster.
“Children scream and cry to be let out,” Webster said. “Some of the children of Legal Aid represent soil themselves in panic. “Some of the children we represent hurt themselves, desperate to get the attention and care from an adult.”