Shuswap Your Classified Connection / Vol. 26 No. 41 Oct. 9, 2015
Market News
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Parents want ‘quiet rooms’ banned
Inside Shuswap
Schools: District says students removed from classrooms never unsupervised.
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By Martha Wickett
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A phone call from her son’s elementary school left mom Jackie Graham ‘seeing red.’ On Thursday, Sept. 24, says Graham, she received a call from South Broadview Elementary stating she should come and pick up her son. Deacon is seven, in Grade 2, and has Down Syndrome. “They said the quiet room wasn’t working today. I said, ‘Quiet room?’ They said, ‘yeah, well we put him in the quiet room to deal with his behaviour…’ “As a mom and hearing that, you just kind of see red. That’s how we found out about it.” She would like to see quiet rooms completely banned from schools and, if the Ministry of Education won’t do that, strict guidelines must be in place regarding their use. She thinks the responsibility for her son’s situation ultimately lies with the lack of funding provided in the education system. Graham says she was informed prior to her discovery that staff involved in her son’s education would be having a team meeting on Sept. 18 to discuss a plan. She asked if she should get a sitter so she could attend the meeting. She said she was told no, she would be updated after the meeting. As well as being the mother of four, Graham is an on-call CEA (certified education assistant) with School District #83. Deacon has a CEA assigned to him full-time throughout his school day. “I found out about the quiet room
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n Deacon Graham, who has Down Syndrome, has been staying at home from school with his mom Jackie since she learned his school was putting him in a ‘quiet room’ to deal with problem behaviours. before they could tell me about the quiet room,” she says, noting when she later met with the learning resource teacher, principal and district administrator, she told them she was not okay with its use. “To me that goes against everything an inclusive education should be,” she says, noting she’s not saying all Deacon’s behaviours are okay. But, “if his neuro-typical peer would do it, the teacher would probably go, okay…, we don’t do this in the classroom.” She says the room is about nine
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by seven feet, “about the size of a walk-in closet.” A photo taken of the inside shows a mat and a bean bag chair with a blanket, all on the floor. “It just broke my heart to see that happen to my child – to anybody’s child. It breaks my heart to think this is in place in schools.” On the outside of the door is a notice entitled: ‘Procedure for calming room when fire alarm bell activated.’ It states that “the calming room locking system is linked to the fire
alarm. The door will automatically release when the alarm bell rings. When the lock releases, the door can be pulled to open, but does not open spontaneously...” Graham said Deacon didn’t become unhappy about going to school, but she notes the quiet room was used for only four days before she found out and kept him home. She said she was shown notes from his file and, on one of those days, See Advocate on page 2
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