Creepy ‘isolation booth’ used in public elementary school to lock up disabled students
By Madison Ruppert
Editor of End the Lie
One of the photos posted on Facebook shows the isolation box at Mint Valley Elementary School in Longview, Wash. (Image credit: Facebook/KATU)
Apparently the school to prison pipeline is much more significant than I previously thought. Not only are schools forcing children to be tracked and withdrawing them when they refuse to accept such tracking or putting six-year-old kids in handcuffs for alleged temper tantrums, in one school system they are placing special needs students in a kind of solitary confinement they call an “isolation booth.”
One such room, eerily reminiscent of the infamous “padded rooms” of psychiatric hospitals in times past, exists in Mint Valley Elementary School, part of the Longview Public School system in Longview, Washington.
According to KATU, a local news station out of Longview, Washington, the room has been used for the past four years.
“That’s because the school hosts a special education program for disabled students with behavioral issues,” reports KATU. “The booth is used to calm down some of the students when they’re at risk of hurting themselves or others.”
While KATU regularly refers to it as an “isolation box” the Longview Public School administrators prefer calling it an “isolation booth.”
The picture of the booth, shown above (with additional images below), quickly spread around Facebook and other social networks with many viewers responding with apparent horror.
The original poster of the image on Facebook, identified by KATU as Ana Bate, a Longview mother, called its use “abusive, arguing children are locked in for crying or tapping on their desks.”
Darren Pirtle, responding to the photo asked, “seriously … have the police been notified that this is being used?”
Bate is the mother of a 10-year-old son who is not in the special education program at Mint Valley Elementary School but she told KATU that her son witnessed the placing of several children in the box.
According to Bate, in one case a female aide approached a boy from behind, picked him up off the floor and put him in the so-called isolation booth.
Bate also related another instance when a boy was put in the box for lifting up a desk and after he was in the booth itself he became violent, a somewhat understandable reaction to being forced into solitary confinement.
“My question for the school district is how is that therapeutic if not directly opposite from this supposed reinforcement they’d like everybody to believe it to be?” asked Bate.
“If they are being paid to lock people up, get extra education and work in mental health or psychiatric units, not with children that have minds that need to be explored, need to be expanded, that need to feel safe,” Bate said, according to KATU. (Note: the odd phrasing of the statement was printed by KATU and copied verbatim by End the Lie to maintain accuracy.)
The Longview Public Schools see it in a completely different light.
“People have their own opinions without having a lot of the information about it,” said Sandy Catt, director of communications for Longview Public Schools. “I would not classify it as abusive.”
Catt claimed that the isolation booth is designed as therapy for students who need to calm down. One must wonder why they are using a technique abandoned by the psychiatric field decades ago while continuing to claim it is “therapy.”
According to Catt, only eight or nine students are allowed to be placed in the box because they have permission from the parents of the children.
“It is concerning to us that there may not be a complete understanding of the situation,” said Catt.
Catt claimed that some of the eight or nine children voluntarily go inside the isolation booth for a break from stimulation.
Catt also said that when the door is locked with the child inside, a staff member remains outside the booth monitoring what happens.
According to Catt, the school district had never received a complaint about the isolation booth until Tuesday and “none of those complaints has come from parents whose students went inside,” according to KATU.
KATU added that the children of parents who object to the troubling practice would never be forced into the box since the district requires permission from parents.
However, Bate made a quite valid point, at least in my humble opinion, in telling KATU that she questions the parents who agree to allow their children to be placed in the isolation box.
“I have a 20-year-old daughter who’s actually been institutionalized, medicated heavily, ADD, ADHD, RAD, OCD, among other things,” Bate said. “I never had to have anybody put her in a box. I didn’t have any problems dealing with the situation, so I do know both sides.”
“If you feel like you have to lock a child up, they shouldn’t be in public school,” said Bate, according to KATU. “I don’t think it gets any clearer than that.”
UPDATE: KATU is now reporting that one parent, Candace Dawson, says that the school put her child in the booth without her permission when he attended Mint Valley Elementary three years ago.
“He said that’s the naughty room,” Dawson told KATU. “That’s what he called it. He said when kids are naughty they get put in there.”
Dawson said that she had no idea that the school had anything like the isolation room in place until she went online and saw that Mint Valley Elementary was making headlines.
Dawson said that when she asked her son about it, he became very uncomfortable and informed her that he not only recognized the pictures plastered across the Internet but also said that his teacher forced him to spend time in the so-called “isolation booth.”
Dawson said that while her soon indeed does have some behavioral problems, she “would never OK the school to send her son to this room.”
This statement is in stark contrast with the official line coming from the administrators who claim that parents give permission before any child is placed in the box.
Dawson said that she would file a complaint Wednesday afternoon and the district stated late Wednesday that “it does have new information that brings to light something like Dawson’s complaint but it would not confirm that Dawson did in fact make a complaint Wednesday afternoon,” according to KATU.
UPDATE 2:More images of the “isolation booth” have been posted online by KATU. View them below:
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Madison Ruppert is a Los Angeles-based independent journalist and researcher as well as the founder, owner, administrator and editor of EndtheLie.com. He has no affiliations with any government agencies, political parties, non-governmental organizations, or economic schools. He is available for freelance writing assignments and appearances or interviews in any format. He can be reached by emailing
These boxes are benificial. Believe it or not a lot or children including my son love to go in them. There is also something about the game of having to be put in one. Leave it alone. It something that needs to be addressed between the parents the school and the individual child. After all we are not all a like and size does not fit all. Some student’s do have horrific behavior problem that many people have dificulty undrstanding. Also remember you are dealing with public schools recieveing public funds. Really the true student to adult ratio in a class room is under funded. True therapy would require a 1:1 ratio. Sorry but, that is not going to happen in this economy no matter how it is surgar coated. My advise to parent’s generally… You want something done correctly … Do it yourself. Do not count on your public schools. The way schools are run now, it is just supplemental to your child social life. Or would you prefer to keep your head stuck sand. Like an Egyption task master long ago, teachers work like slaves, are whipped with pointless task and put down and told basically to make bricks for the phareos temple without straw. The break down of society, diet and entertainment, the lack of a lot parent responsibility to raise healthy happy kids has led to this mess. You can trian teacher to try and do a better job, but with out more personal support for each student’s and especially special education student’s not much is going to be accomplished. So leave it alone, it really is the parent’s responsiblity over all. The school will do it’s best with what ever resources it has. Besides, play taxes now pay taxes later. Either way the little pill will give someone a job when he goes to jail. Ideally it is not what you want for a society, but seriously what is really going to happen.
you’re a sick excuse for a parent
You mostly likely have never been through hours of screaming, hitting an destruction of property for no understanble reason other then he lost a toy several days ago and the toy can’t be found right now. He just can’t comprehend the toy is gone.
Now the kid is growing, he is strong, and he hurts. Better that he learns now. Confinement now with an option to be free shortly or on your own accord or a jail later. Jail later a lot less cushy and a lot more meaner. i love my son. He is the best! He has just needed a lot more time in accomplishing a skill most three and four year olds have achieved by the time they have cometo school. We are happy. He is on grade level and doing fine.
actually i have… but i raise my child correctly by homeschooling not sending them to a prison called a public school. youre sick just sick
I decided to write more on this being that my son has autism. For a child with sonsory issues these boxes can be a haeven. These boxes are very quiet,dimly lit and cozy. It is theraputic in that it allows a child to get control of themselves by themselves. It helps them to learn to feel confident in taking charge of their own state of mind in a mostly private peaceful place. It good and healthy for the staff too. Sometimes we all just need a break. Once a child knows this is not a harmful place, it quickly becomes a safe place to just chill out. I sometimes just wish I had a box I could just climb into and hide away form the world. I know it looks awful but my experience and my sons experience tells me it’s not so. He really does like it. It is really is a personal option. It is not for all student’s, but it is a great option for some. Please stop judging and muck raking. We have enough on our plate.
great, now go lock yourself in a box you sick excuse for a parent
You are funny.
and you are a horrible parent at least you admit it
go put your sick shit somewhere else
shut the fuck up you psycho. You’re the kind of pussy that makes Americans look like paranoid fruitcakes.
Seriously, this is what I have done for son past and pressent. My spouse and I have spent a ton of money for OT, PT, Speech and ABA. We pay on a high deducatable PPO becuase we know we are going to spend more then $6,000 per year on services for our son. I quit work for a year when I found the school could not do enough for my son. I was amazed on how much progress my son made with more personal 1:1 attention. unfortunatly we are not rich and I had to return back to work. I put my son in a charter school where I don’t get the complaining from the regular public school about why my son is being pulled out so much for recieveing outside theriputic services the school will not provide for him. at the charter school I can even have the therapiist go to him and work with him in that environment. I get accurate feedback too on how he is really performing. At regular public school the teacher’s were so over worked they could only describe is progress in terms of weather, “it’s been kind of stormy with a few rays of sunshine.” With corrective feedback I can do a better job, which altimately helps my son blossom. Which is what has happened. We have done diet’s hyperbartic treament (out of pocket…huge growth), horses, pets and therapy and I read with him every night. Oh, and by the way, I am an excellent mommy.
keep telling yourself you’re a “great mommy” bc no one believes you exept yourself
I agree with you, home schooling is the best.
A KArry Van Zant.. Then buy one for your own house and trap your kid in there… You need to really look at what you are saying. Our children are being trained to LOVE prison life? YOur child Loves this thing? How about the 1000′s of kids that DO NOT!?! WTF? It is sick sick world.. read 1984, read a brave new world. THESE are the books that warned us about what would happen and we laughed.. It is not the school’s RIGHT to stick a kid in a box and control him.. I cannot believe, as a parent, you would even CONSIDER allowing strangers in some big gov’t box to throw your kid in a tiny torture box! And how is this any better than a pill? We have Autism and ADHD and other issues due to the gov’t creating them! We are being experimented like white rats! PLEASE PLEASE wake the hell up!!!!!
“We have Autism and ADHD and other issues due to the gov’t creating them! We are being experimented like white rats! PLEASE PLEASE wake the hell up!!!!!”
Are you fucking high. From now on everything you say is invalid because of that idiotic statement.
Karry Van Zant, there’s so much shit I would love to say, but I’m not spending my whole afternoon raging over you. Short and sweet: you’re either a fucking idiot who needs to stop breeding and WAKE THE HELL UP, or simply a online persona for the government, on here to influence public opinion. Either way, suck my dick (:
I just saw this on the news and couldn’t believe what I saw. What makes the school think they have a right to do this? If a child is so out of control why not call us parents to pick up our
child and let us handle the situation. If we had an isolation room in our own rooms believe me CPS would be called on us.
I never said it was and should be used for all children. It shouldn’t. However there are certian children who benifit from having access to these small confined spaces. AllI am saying do dont judge what you don’t understand. This is not a one size fits all world. As as far as the government goes I believe smaller is better. As far as education goes I believe in freedom. The tax payer money should follow the student to where ever the parent’s believe is the best placement for there child. I also support homeschooling. Our states have standards and that is what our education practices shouldbe based off of. Not State/ Federal Test.
On another note. Did you know people pay big bucks to be locked up in little cylindars for over an hour…. It it called hypeharic chambers. People do this to help heal their bodies and their brains. I’ve done it with and with out my son over 60 times. After you get through the clusterphobia it’s really nice.
Oh my God! The world has gone completely mad. CHILDREN do not need to be shut in a box and deprived of human company.
This is rendition, not “therapy” ! It’s a PADDED CELL. They are held against their will–it’s LOCKED for Christ’s sake!
This school system needs to be shut down. Take your kids out of this nazi camp before the state can do any more psychological damage to them.
Relax people It is only ever considered for the most extreme behaviors. Usually severely mentally hadicaped special education students that have conitions like autism, and emotionally disturbed. These students can be so enraged and violent they are literally a danger to themselves and others. Seriously do you want your little daughter or son choked or beaten on from an out of control autistic or emotionally disturbed student. These kids do not give up until their anger as subsided. These kids can hurt staff as well. I know of one kid where the school district in south central Texas paid to put the child in a residential treament ceter. This happend though only after workman comp claims where over $150,000.
Truthfully, It is a last resort. These children usually spend about 20 to 30 minutes until they calm down. There is always an adult pressent that is trianed to assist the student’s in calming down. These studen’t are not being yelled at. They are being talked to calmy and softly.
Some people argue these kids shouldn’t be in public school. Except how else are these kids suppose to learn how to behave socially it you isolate them from normal people. Also too you have to remember the behavior is not constant. It occurs when the SpEd student has trouble processing his thinking in a certain given situation. It difficult for most lay people to understand. Which is why I have been spending so much time trying to educate the lay person.
Any how this article seems more to me like a angery parent that just wanted to get back at the school. Why… becuase her child got into trouble and was waiting in the office. Something tells me the outcomes of the parent office meeting didn’t go well ans she decided to cuase a stink. Another thing. The article never mentioned if the students where deciding to go in the booth for themselves. Believe it not kids are often curious and just enjoy checking it out. Some even enjoy the peace and quiet and ask to go in these booth. i am sure many of you like to be just left along too.
My advice for what ever it’s worth is home schooling if you can afford it. The children benifit so much more from a loving nuturing 1 on 1 relationship. This is something you just can’t get as well in a public school. The schools are just to short staffed. Find your self a good co op and get involved in your childs life.
I work in a unit that has a time out room. Ours is significantly larger and has a magnetic lock that must be held the entire time a student is in it. I have worked with students who are labeled as having Emotional and Behavioral Disorders both in the school and clinical settings. These rooms are not used as “therapy” but more as a safety area. Our students are allowed to request to go in (without the door closed) at any time to decompress. They are also placed there when they have become a danger to themselves or others. At that time other assessments are used to complete a plan to return them back to their learning environment. There are occasions when students become extremely aggressive and there needs to be an area where it can be dealt with without endangering others in the room. Unless you deal with this population, you aren’t going to understand. You will be the people on the outside passing judgement on those very same students you claim to be heralding for now… calling them second-class citizens, sickos and degenerates. Those same CHILDREN who have lived horror stories in their own heads due to mental illness. If the goal of this site is to end the lies, please by all means, allow me to help.
Thank you FED UP!
I am a 37yr old male, diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder at the age of 19, and frequented psychiatric hospitals up to four times a year in the beginning of my illness. I was sent into isolation rooms, or what they called “seclusion” for periods between 8-12hrs. During these stays in these rooms there are no sensory stimuli and no amount of banging on the door or cries to be let out would be heard or responded. It, to me, felt that if I didn’t tow the line in hospital, argue with the nurses or didn’t obey the routine, they would throw me into seclusion. In seclusion you would end up coming to the conclusion that if I didn’t follow the status quo, the belief systems of the mainstream society, my punishment would be the complete removal of freedom and stimuli, or be literally taken out of society. Thus, my illness, when surfaced, they trained me to realign myself to behave according to the routines and structure of living of “normal” society or face “seclusion”.
This method of behavioral control just furthers the notion that if you don’t be a “robot” like the majority, you will be outcast and disconnected with the “whole”.
After 8 to 12 hours I could see how you woul feel that way. In a way you are right. Certain overwhelming behavior, especially destructive behavior, is not something that will be tolerated by many. Must become master of your own thoughts and feelings. The saying goes no man is an island.
Now in school time in the booth affect time spent learning and getting ready for test preparation. So the les time a student is in the therapy box the better. It disrupts the school function when you have to have staff pulled off other duties to sit by and wait for a kid to get over his tantrum. Aslo too remember student’s will not spend the amount of time you spent for the very simple reason that the school day is usually 5 or six hours long. A student would have to start something right off the bat. Iam certain after an hour the school would be calling the parrent;s for sure. I realy doubt water would be denied unless the child was spittng it at others. Water is a key component in thinking. That’s why when a student is crying andupsetteacher are always telling a student to get a drink of water and to slow down and take a deep breath. Air helps breathing too.
Iam sorry for your experience … it sounds like you went through heavy duty stuff.
Sorry about all the crapy typing and grammar errors . I just got off working 14 hrs.
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People need to keep things in perspective. First of all lashing out and calling someone you don’t know sick is not helping anyone. We need to cooperate and unite to fight this tyranny. Getting angry and calling names actually makes you look like you have no understanding of handling a situation. However, I disagree with what Kathy is saying for one reason. I understand the possible “usefulness” in some particular situations and schools but overall this type of treatment is just a foreshadow of what is to come. I disagree because little by little these boxes will become socially acceptable and maybe in a few years YOU will be in one not your kids. Keep in mind that our freedoms are little by little being taken away. I also agree with the others that parents should be in charge of how they treat and discipline their kids and not institutionalized government owned schools. This idea of a solitary box can only lead to more issues and an implementation of conformity and fear of authority. Also, if you support this keep in mind all the parents that don’t are subject to your possibly biased and un researched beliefs. You strike as the type to believe PPID chips, which are implanted in the skin for tracking are a GREAT idea for keeping your kids safe. I hope I’m wrong as even if this SAFE society is formed there will be no joy to be safe in, and life will be an automated robotic existence. Wake up people and much love to all, even the government diversion experts who probably frequent these sites
People need to keep things in perspective. First of all lashing out and calling someone you don’t know sick is not helping anyone. We need to cooperate and unite to fight this tyranny. Getting angry and calling names actually makes you look like you have no understanding of handling a situation. However, I disagree with what Kathy is saying for one reason. I understand the possible “usefulness” in some particular situations and schools but overall this type of treatment is just a foreshadow of what is to come. I disagree because little by little these boxes will become socially acceptable and maybe in a few years YOU will be in one not your kids. Keep in mind that our freedoms are little by little being taken away. I also agree with the others that parents should be in charge of how they treat and discipline their kids and not institutionalized government owned schools. This idea of a solitary box can only lead to more issues and an implementation of conformity and fear of authority. Also, if you support this keep in mind all the parents that don’t are subject to your possibly biased and un researched beliefs. You strike as the type to believe PPID chips, which are implanted in the skin for tracking are a GREAT idea for keeping your kids safe. I hope I’m wrong as even if this SAFE society is formed there will be no joy to be safe in, and life will be an automated robotic existence. Wake up people and much love to all, even the government diversion experts who probably frequent these sites