Edmonton Public Schools cuts number of seclusion rooms, but confinement continues
Advocates demanding an end to the use of seclusion rooms say they're pleased the Edmonton public school division has decommissioned more than 60 of them in the last year.
A new report to the school board last week shows the number of seclusion rooms has dropped by about 37 per cent during the last year, leaving 105 rooms operational in 56 public schools.
"We're extremely pleased to see a reduction in the number of seclusion rooms and in the use of those rooms, because quite frankly, the trend over the last few years has been in the other direction," said Trish Bowman, the CEO of Inclusion Alberta.
A seclusion room is an empty chamber that can be locked from the outside. Provincial standards dictate that school staff are only to use the rooms in an emergency, when a student presents a danger of harm to themselves or others.
Staff are only supposed to put students in the rooms with parents' permission. Division employees have acknowledged that in a crisis, it does sometimes happen without parental consent.
For years, Inclusion Alberta and some parents are among advocates for students with disabilities who say the rooms should be eliminated.
Parent Rosemarie Jordan says she found out years after the fact that her son, who has multiple disabilities, was put into seclusion rooms, and school staff never informed her.
The experience caused him trauma, distress, and affected his willingness to attend school, she said.
"He just understood that this is something that adults shouldn't be doing to me," she said in an interview last week.
She said her son, who is now in Grade 10, consistently asks to speak school division managers because he wants to tell them to stop the practice.
Research suggests that when a school employee feels it necessary to put a student inside one of the rooms, the experience can also distress staff members and other students who witness the event, Bowman said.
Use of the rooms became the focus of attention in 2018, when a Strathcona County family launched a lawsuit in response to their autistic child's troubling experience in a seclusion room.
The then-NDP government promised to ban school seclusion rooms. After the United Conservative Party won the 2019 election, the government reversed that decision and instead introduced standards for the use of seclusion and restraint.
Since then, Edmonton Public Schools has had a stated goal of phasing out the rooms.
The division runs many programs for growing numbers of students diagnosed with autism, developmental disabilities or behavioural disorders. As it adapted more school spaces to accommodate these programs, it also built rooms that could be used for seclusion.
Data obtained through freedom of information requests showed last year that Edmonton Public Schools had almost two-thirds of the total number of seclusion rooms reported to the provincial government.
In the 2024-25 school year, staff in the division put 640 students into the rooms against their will 1,581 times, according to data from the division. Critics said that seemed to be an excessive number of emergency situations and questioned whether every incident warranted the use of seclusion.
The numbers do not include incidents where trained staff physically restrain a student who poses a risk of harm.
Board chair says goal remains zero rooms
Four parents and an Inclusion Alberta representative addressed the school board last week, applauding the decommissioning of rooms and reduction in their use.
Parent Sarah Doll called the trend "a ray of light in an otherwise dark year for families of disabled students."
Division superintendent Darrel Robertson told the board meeting he is requiring certain staff to take mandatory training in non-violent crisis intervention techniques.
A few schools are also piloting a different de-escalation program, which has been "highly impactful." Robertson said the division is working to scale up that training to more schools.
"I don't want seclusion rooms in our division at all," he said. "We're working hard to continue to get better."
However, the school division and board trustees are making changes to public reporting and meeting procedures that have sullied some advocates' satisfaction with the seclusion room reductions.
After five years of producing a standalone report on seclusion room use for the school board, the division will now include the information in a broader annual performance document called the Annual Education Results Report.
Trustees, who are elected officials, also decided earlier this month to change the rules about who may address the board at a public meeting. The board will no longer include public comments on its livestream of meetings. Speakers can only address issues on the board's agenda for that meeting date, and it is limiting the number of speakers on each topic to five per meeting.
Bowman said the school division's public reporting on seclusion rooms had been instrumental in the push to reduce their numbers.
"It's actually deeply troubling that they've taken a step away from this kind of public transparency and accountability," she said.
School division spokesperson Kim Smith said trustees changed the meeting rules to align with other school boards, and make better use of meeting time. She said there are other ways the public can contact their trustees.
School board chair Julie Kusiek told reporters she thinks the change will strengthen accountability, because the report requires the division to set a goal and outline a plan for achieving that target.
"And we have our target for this, which is, we're moving towards zero seclusion rooms," Kusiek said.
The division has yet to set a timeline to meet that goal.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
35 minutes ago
- CTV News
AHS warns of several measles exposures in Edmonton, Leduc in last week
The Misericordia Community Hospital can be seen in this undated file photo. (File) Alberta Health Services on Saturday alerted the public about several measles exposures in Edmonton and Leduc. A person who has been confirmed to have measles was in the following locations while infectious. Others who were in the same locations may have been exposed and should monitor for symptoms and review their immunization record. Edmonton Remedium Medical Clinic at Meadowlark Health and Shopping Centre 11:26 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 19 Walmart at Meadowlark Health and Shopping Centre 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on June 17, 18 and 19 Misericordia Community Hospital emergency department 5:21 p.m. June 17 to 3:53 a.m. June 18 Edmonton Transit Service Route 4 and 54 buses 2:30 p.m. to 7:20 p.m. June 17 Leduc Leduc Community Hospital emergency department 10:39 p.m. June 17 to 3:10 a.m. June 18 Leduc Community Hospital diagnostic imaging 12:30 a.m. to 2:35 a.m. June 18 Measles is extremely contagious and spreads easily through the air. Symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes, and a rash that starts three to seven days after a fever starts, usually beginning behind the ears or face and spreading down the body. Anybody with symptoms should stay at home and call Alberta's measles hotline at 1-844-944-3434 before visiting any healthcare facility or provider, including a family physician clinic or pharmacy, AHS says. Measles can cause ear infections, pneumonia, brain inflammation, premature delivery and sometimes death.
CTV News
an hour ago
- CTV News
Strategist calls passing Bill C-5 'a key moment' for PM Carney's first parliament session
Watch Liberal strategist Sharon Kaur discusses PM Carney's goals in Europe, grades his first parliament session, and addresses concerns about Bill C-5.
CBC
an hour ago
- CBC
After 4 years away, Cathy Wong hopes to return to Montreal city council
Former Montreal city council speaker, Cathy Wong is seeking to replace Coun. Luc Rabouin as borough mayor for Plateau-Mont-Royal in the next election — four years after she exited municipal politics. Wong will run as a candidate with Projet Montréal while Rabouin vies for the city mayor's office in November. Wong, who represented the Peter-McGill district in downtown Montreal from 2017 until 2021, said she did not know she would be coming back when she chose not to seek re-election to prioritize her family. "It's really since I would say December, after the American elections but also after a lot of different crises — climate crisis, social crisis, democratic crisis — that I felt the need to come back to be more involved in building policies that are feminist, that are inclusive, and that are green," she said. "In the last six months, every time I was opening the news, I felt so much anger, felt powerless," she said, adding that it created a feeling of wanting to be involved. If elected, Wong says she'd like to work to improve accessibility in the Plateau-Mont-Royal focusing on traffic-calming and street safety measures, housing and increasing universal accessibility. She moved to the borough in 2021 and lives there with her family. For the last four years she's been working as the vice-president of Telefilm Canada. Wong was first elected as a member of Ensemble Montréal in 2017, becoming the first elected official of Chinese descent at city hall. She was named speaker that same year, making her the first woman to hold the job in Montreal. She quit her party to sit as an independent and later joined Projet Montréal in 2019. She also became the first executive committee member in charge of fighting racism and discrimination. "I believe that the city has advanced in terms of inclusivity and in terms of accessibility but of course there's still work to be done," she said. "Today I'm running for mayor of a borough where I believe that there is still so many opportunities to make our borough more accessible, more inclusive, and this is the work I want to focus on."
