CENTRALIA — A report released Tuesday by ProPublica documents a disturbing practice in schools across Illinois, including one in Centralia, where students, most of them with disabilities, are locked in isolation rooms.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune found more than 20,000 incidents from the 2017-18 school year and through early December 2018.
Of those, about 12,000 included enough detail to determine what prompted the timeout. In more than a third of these incidents, school workers documented no safety reason for the seclusion.
Bridges Learning Center in Centralia serves students from Kindergarten through high school with severe behavioral, emotional, and developmental disorders.
Records indicate Bridges used seclusion 1,288 times in the 15 months of school that reports examined. The school has about 65 students.
According to the Bridges Learning Center website, if a student’s behavior presents a threat to the safety of others, self, or the environment, the student may be removed to a quiet room to allow for a safe period in which he/she can regain self-control.
Each booth at Bridges is about 6 by 8 feet, with a steel door. ProPublica reports that by 8:35 A.M. on Dec. 19, 2017, all five of the timeout “booths” at Bridges were already full.
According to the Tribune/ProPublica analysis of Bridges records, 72-percent of the seclusions were not prompted by a safety issue, as the law requires.
Schools aren’t supposed to put students in seclusion for talking back or swearing, but records show that Bridges did repeatedly. Workers also shut many students in booths for hours after the child’s challenging behavior ended.
One local mother reportedly told Bridges’ administrators that timeout booths should never be used on her 6-year-old son who has autism and is nonverbal. The boy can reportedly sign a few words, including “blue,” “green” and “truck.”
She described the booth at Bridges as having a metal bench and a lock and key.
While she had been assured that her 6-year-old son would not be secluded, she started to worry when he came home signing “timeout.” Now, she’s fighting for a different school placement.
Nineteen states have outlawed the use of isolation rooms on children.
A call to Cassie Clark, who heads the Kaskaskia Special Education District, has not yet been returned.