Two B.C. parents have pulled their seven-year-old son out of school after learning he’d been repeatedly removed from class and locked in a so-called “quiet room.”
Salmon Arm residents Jackie and Kirk Graham said their son Deacon loves going to school, but lately they’ve been keeping him at home.
That’s because they found out Deacon, who has Down Syndrome, was occasionally being locked in a tiny, windowless room when he misbehaved.
“I think it’s awful. It breaks my heart for my son,” Jackie said.
According to the parents, Deacon was being locked in a nine-by-seven-foot room that had a sign on the door indicating the lock would disengage in the event of a fire.
“This needs to stop,” Kirk added. “Nobody should be put in a lockdown room.”
The school district told CTV News it couldn’t discuss the issue in person Tuesday, but issued a statement promising staff would be meeting with the parents this week.
The district’s director of student learning has already met with staff at Deacon’s school.
B.C. schools’ use of quiet rooms, or isolation rooms as they’re sometimes known, made headlines nearly two years ago following the release of a damning report from advocacy group Inclusion B.C.
The report found some students had allegedly been locked alone in small rooms, closets and even stairwells for up to three hours.
Provincial officials promised to look into the issue and find a solution. On Tuesday, Education Minister Mike Bernier said the government is almost ready to release guidelines letting schools know how and when to use quiet rooms.
“The last 18 months we’ve been working on making policies to make sure that school districts and teachers are appropriately using these rooms, these quiet rooms, for safety purposes,” Bernier said.
B.C. has no plans to ban the practice, however. Bernier said there is room for quiet rooms in the province provided they’re used properly.
“We want to make sure that not only student safety, but staff safety as well is of utmost importance,” Bernier said.
That solution doesn’t cut it for Deacon’s parents, or NDP education critic Rob Fleming, who blamed the situation on underfunding in the public school system.
“There’s a staff shortage. Special needs education in many districts around the province is not what it should be,” Fleming said.
“It really comes down to the Ministry of Education failing.”
B.C.’s new quiet room guidelines should be available later this month, according to the ministry.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Kent Molgat
