Placing a student in seclusion is meant to be used as an emergency response to dangerous behavior, but it happens in other circumstances, too.

“Jessica,” the adoptive mother of a third grade student, was shocked when she discovered that her daughter had spent over 100 hours locked in a room alone at her North Carolina public school.

School staff locked the child in a room by herself after she flipped markers in the air, lay on the floor and tilted her chair back, Jessica told me in 2024. Jessica’s daughter has a nonverbal learning disability, mild attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and bipolar disorder.

Originally published on theconversation.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.