Legal Aid lawyers warn against school seclusion rooms for Minnesota’s youngest learners
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Legal Aid attorneys on Wednesday released a report showing spartan conditions in school seclusion rooms across Minnesota as they urged lawmakers to continue the state’s ban on using those rooms for the state’s youngest learners.
Seclusion is the involuntary confinement of a child with disabilities, typically for behavioral reasons, alone in a room in a public school building. Minnesota in 2023 banned seclusion rooms for students in kindergarten through third grade. Legal Aid attorneys believe lawmakers will try to end the ban in the upcoming legislative session.
Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid visited 80 of the state's 194 registered seclusion rooms last fall to take photos and videos. While most met minimum state requirements, supervising attorney Jessica Heiser said she hopes the photos help the public see the difference between sensory rooms and seclusion rooms.
“The visuals, we think, are really helpful to make that distinction, because we are fearful that members of the public and legislators confuse seclusion rooms and calming rooms a lot,” Heiser said. “Calming rooms, good; seclusion, bad.”
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Seclusion rooms, she added, were mostly cinder block walls with concrete floors, “very small rooms, 6 by 5 (feet), nothing inside them. The calming rooms were classroom size, and they had lots of toys and tools and swings, and they were colorful, and they were fun to be in, honestly.”
Last year, DFL state Sen. Judy Seeberger drafted a bill to reinstate seclusion rooms for young learners, saying that the practice can be helpful for some students.
Disability advocates oppose the rooms. Some Minnesota Department of Education officials also want to ban seclusion rooms for all grades.
“These rooms are so cloaked in secrecy and, really, school shame that nobody really knew what we're talking about,” said Jessica Webster, an attorney on Legal Aid’s team working to uphold and expand the ban on seclusion rooms.
The number of incidents leading to seclusion has dropped significantly over the last four years, from 4,702 to 1,871. Legal Aid’s report, though, says that the documentation of existing seclusion rooms is not accurate, making it difficult for parents of children with disabilities to know if their schools use seclusion.
“When you look at them,” Webster added, “you can make your own determination about whether there's humanity in these spaces.”
