Audio Parents, administrators at odds over locked time-out rooms in school (story audio) Photos Sharon Nygren Margaret O'Sullivan Kane Howard Armstrong More from MPR The impact of a special education mandate (10/21/2002) Respond to this story Talk about this story in the MPR News Forum Submit a commentary Help us cover this story

Parents, administrators at odds over locked time-out rooms in school
by Tim Pugmire, Minnesota Public Radio
December 7, 2002

Sharon Nygren of Minneapolis claims teachers often went too far in dealing with her son, Christopher, who she says was regularly placed in small locked rooms. (MPR Photo/Tim Pugmire)

Parents of children with behavioral disorders say the use of locked "time-out" rooms in Minnesota schools is an inhumane punishment and should be prohibited. State education officials are proposing a ban of such rooms, along with other changes in special education discipline rules. But several school administrators and special education teachers testified in a public hearing in Roseville that locked isolation is sometimes necessary to keep their classrooms safe.

Roseville, Minn. — Educators dealing with disruptive, unruly students in their classrooms often use some form of "time out" to restore order. A brief isolation can provide a student with a behavioral or emotional disorder a chance to calm down and then resume learning.

But Sharon Nygren of Minneapolis claims teachers often went too far in dealing with her son, Christopher, who she says was regularly placed in small, locked rooms.

"Christopher would bang his head on cinder-block walls, on tile floors. He was in locked seclusion upwards to one hour and 45 minutes. And the last time he was there he was eight years old, and he took off his shirt, tied one sleeve around the door handle and the other sleeve around his throat because he begged and pleaded to come out of there," she said.

	Howard Armstrong

Nygren says her son, who's now 10, is enrolled in a charter school and doing well academically and behaviorally. She's also pursuing legal action against the Minneapolis school district.

Tom Lombard, assistant commissioner with the state Department of Children, Families and Learning say complaints like Nygren's were drawing the agency's attention.

"We noticed from 1994 to the last few years some increasing occurences of non-compliance, and some major kind of misuses and abuses of restraints and timeouts. Not widespread, but major in their significance," according to Lombard.

The agency's proposed update of special education rules on discipline would prohibit the isolation of students in locked rooms. All disciplinary isolations would be limited to 15 minutes. School administrators oppose the changes.

Fred Storti of the Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association says the rule changes will create additional paperwork and give schools less flexibility.

"On a continuum of different strategies that teachers and principals use with behaviorally challenged students, that last thing they use is a seclusionary time out. But not to have that available to a local school would really cause students to be moved out of local schools possibly to a more restrictive environment," Storti said.

	Margaret O'Sullivan Kane

Howard Armstrong, a special education coordinator with the Rum River Special Education Cooperative, agrees. He says locked time outs are infrequent, but necessary in dealing with the most severe behavioral or emotional disorders.

"Without that option of using that, we are left with physically restraining kids for extended periods of time. And that is more dangerous both to the students, staff, other kids. And it's also we believe a less humane intervention than simply putting a student in a room to calm down," said Armstrong.

The apparent widespread acceptance of locked isolation rooms among educators is troubling to attorney Margaret O'Sullivan Kane. The co-founder of the Center for Education Law says school leaders should be outraged at a punishment she describes as dehumanizing.

Kane says time out rooms are just easy ways for teachers to get some kids out of the way.

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt, what this is really is a blunt primitive tool that these individuals are using to make their jobs easier. That's what I suspect is happening here. That they're clinging to this like some kind of life raft that they think they need in order to accomplish their jobs," according to Kane.

As part of the rule-making process, an administrative law judge will review the testimony gathered from four public hearings and issue a report. CFL officials will then use the ruling to adopt new state special education policy on student discipline.

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