Minnesota barred schools from locking up young students alone. It might change course.

Room 48 became “the room of nightmares” for Katie Schmidt’s family.

School staff would carry her son, who has autism spectrum disorder, to the empty seclusion room last year when the second-grader’s behavior was challenging, she said.

“It was horrifying,” said Schmidt, who learned of the practice from her son’s school therapist. “It felt unsafe to him. He couldn’t get out.

“So that is a huge piece of anxiety, locking someone in a room that they can’t get out of that was very small; there’s nothing there, being at the mercy of a random adult.”

Minnesota barred schools from keeping students in third grade or younger alone in rooms at the start of this school year, a practice some parents and experts say is traumatic and harmful. But other parents and school officials contend it’s a necessary tool of last resort to address increased aggressive behavior in classrooms and keep children and staff safe.

Lawmakers are looking again at allowing seclusion, but only if a child‘s parents and the team working on their individualized education plan sign off.

Sen. Judy Seeberger, DFL-Afton, pushed to add a provision to the Senate’s education policy bill extending the seclusion prohibition through sixth grade, unless “explicitly agreed to by the student’s parents and the rest of the individualized education program team.”

The House version of the bill doesn’t include the change, and it remains to be seen whether it will pass this session.

When Seeberger’s son was young, she said, she feared she would have to leave her job as an attorney to homeschool him. When he changed schools in first grade and she saw a seclusion room, she thought: “Thank God. Now at least there’s a place where, when he is severely dysregulating and aggressing toward adults, he can at least be safe; everyone can be safe, until the storm passes.”

Seeberger’s son, now 20, has autism and mental health challenges that made it difficult for him to manage his emotions — resulting in dysregulation — and led to aggressive outbursts when he was young.

When schools aren’t able to use seclusion and a child is being aggressive toward others or destroying property, school staff will call the police, Seeberger said, “and now we’re feeding the school-to-prison pipeline.”

After years of fighting to end seclusion in schools, some advocates say Seeberger’s effort would take the state backward. They held a news conference at the Capitol on Thursday to push back against the measure senators added to a sweeping education policy bill.

“For us, it was just a gut punch because Legal Aid sees this as a violation of human rights,” said Jessica Webster , a staff attorney at Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid.

“We believe it’s torture. We believe it’s a barbaric act to put children who are craving connection into isolation.”

Seclusion rooms can be “pretty grim” and just a little bigger than a closet, she said, and some kids hurt or soil themselves because they are desperate to get out.

But Seeberger said her son was humiliated after he hurt someone or damaged property. She said the room allowed him a place to go when he was aggressive, then “re-emerge with dignity.”

When she told him about Minnesota ending seclusion for young kids, she said he believed it was the wrong decision and felt that, for him, the practice “was unfortunate but it was needed.”

The rooms should never be used as punishment, she said, and conversations when a student leaves seclusion are key to ensure they understand they weren’t being disciplined.

The debate over isolation rooms goes back decades in Minnesota.

Some states have barred seclusion in schools or limited use of it to emergencies. Minnesota law only allows seclusion in an emergency and has guidelines on what is allowed, including requiring staff to observe the child while in seclusion, stopping when a threat of harm ends, and mandating that a room needs be at least 6 by 5 feet.

In 2023, Minnesota lawmakers prohibited the use of seclusion from birth through third grade starting September 2024.

From last October through the end of 2024, school districts reported 630 seclusions, down 37% compared with the same period in the previous school year, according to the Department of Education.

Minnesota has 195 registered seclusion rooms in 50 school districts, department officials said. Advocates say other unregistered rooms are being used.

Lawmakers in 2023 also directed the Education Department to develop recommendations for “urgently ending seclusion in Minnesota schools.”

The department’s report said the state should prohibit the use of seclusion on all children — not just those in third grade or younger — by September 2026. It recommended funding for schools to train staff and implement behavioral crisis prevention practices and alternatives to manage such crises.

The belief that seclusion increases safety is mistaken, said Sophia Frank, a clinical assistant professor at Augsburg University and former special education teacher. It’s traumatizing for both kids and staff and creates an opportunity for harm when someone brings a child to a seclusion room, she said.

Last school year, 144 staff injuries and 60 student injuries were tied to seclusions, according to Education Department data.

Instead of isolation, several parents said children need an adult with them to help them regulate their emotions. They said better training should be available for school staff on how to prevent behavioral problems.

“The best defense is just educating these lovely people that are trying to do good, that are coming to work with difficult children but just don’t have all the tools for it,” Schmidt, who is a teacher, said of paraprofessionals who provide support in schools.

Nicole Woodward, executive director of St. Croix River Education District, agreed with advocates’ desires for more positive strategies and behavior support plans. But, she said, as they teach kids behavior skills, they sometimes need other measures for extreme situations.

Her staff has suffered broken noses and concussions from children. Their district doesn’t have a seclusion room but they are considering adding one, she said, noting that when seclusion isn’t an option, they have to rely more on physically holding children.

“We’re trying to add preventive, positive strategies, but sometimes it has to be both,” Woodward said.

Several parents of kids with autism said they don’t think the proposed guardrail — that parents must agree before seclusion can be used — is an adequate protection. They worry families won’t realize what they have signed off on, particularly those for whom English isn’t their first language.

Parents often don’t fully understand proposed changes to their kid‘s individualized education plan, or IEP, said Maren Christenson Hofer, executive director of the Multicultural Autism Action Network. She said the plans are written in “obtuse and opaque language; they are filled with jargon and acronyms.”

Her son was secluded many years ago, when he was a preschooler.

“That really did nothing to help him regulate his emotions. It didn’t help him to de-escalate at all. It just made him feel like he was abandoned,” Christenson Hofer said. “What he learned that day is school is a place where scary things happen, school is a place where he was traumatized.”