WBUR News

The state education board advanced regulations Tuesday to further restrict controversial “timeout” and seclusion policies in schools, the next step in a years-long effort to reduce the use of the practices. There’s been growing national attention on so-called timeout rooms in recent years, as families of students with disabilities have raised alarms about inappropriate use of the secluded rooms to punish their children and keep them out of class for long periods. Emily LaMarca, the mother of a son with Down syndrome, told the Board of Education in January that her son’s teachers began putting him in a timeout room when he was 10 years old, resulting in trauma. “He was constantly afraid, afraid to go to school, afraid that his teachers would come to our house and harm him. He talked about angry eyes at school and the sounds that his friends made when they were taken to what he called ‘the naughty room’ in therapy. Cole acted out his trauma by locking himself in the therapy dog’s crate because, in his words, he was a ‘bad boy,’ ” LaMarca said.