This week, an opinion piece in the New York Times featured our town, and not in the greatest way. The piece was written by a parent of a ex-Lexington student, on the use of seclusion rooms as punishment for special needs students. The article hit me pretty hard, as I had thought that most of the time, Lexington had handled special needs students very well, and that our town had, in fact, been the almost paragon of good conduct when dealing with these students. This article shows a different side of the story.
What do you think the effect on the schools here this article will have? Will it change anything, or simply get people more incensed when another incident shows up?
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This is horrible. Personally I have never seen discipline like this at a school in Lexington. I’ve spent my whole life in the Lexington Public School system but never had nor seen any kind of child traumatizing event like that. The only thing parents should be complaining about is how early we have to get up for school. I think this article made Lexington look like a psychotic and cruel town, and that is not the light anybody wants to be seen in. The fact that someone would write an article about one stupid girls traumatizing event that for all we know the mother could have made up for a publicity stunt, they do get paid a lot to have the interviews for stuff like this. It's just sick. Why can't they get two opinions, this one and one from an actual student, or maybe the girl herself. Just because the mother says the school was twisted doesn't mean there isn't a huge tumor blocking the logic part of her brain. She should get herself to a psycho ward ASAP.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about what came from the student herself, but the piece was written by her father, who found her in the room. This method of "punishment" is used commonly in schools across the nation, and I'm afraid Lexington may be no different, but you should give some looking into the method that was apparently abused here. Google "seclusion timeout" for more information... Not that I'm actually condoning the use of it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Liam, this article shocked me and was a discouragement to my faith in the local authorities. Although Lily poses the possibility that the entire story could be a scheme, I find it more plausible, since the student in found in the seclusion room by her father. I think that the article will shock our community, however, because we have such a highly acclaimed program for the disabled students, they may think of this as a small incident, which could be defended by the school's program with all of the good things they have done. This seclusion room idea is torture, phisically hurting someone, and could cause victims severe mental trauma. This sort of thing was thought to be abandoned long ago, so it adds to how shocking this story is.
Deletehttp://radioboston.wbur.org/2012/09/11/isolation-restraint-school
ReplyDeleteYou can find a response by Mr. Lichtenstein, Rose's father, and Dr. Ash, our superintendent, on this link to WBUR's RadioBoston.
I too read this article in the New York Times and was completely shocked by it. I have no basis of judgment of the elementary and middle schools in Lexington as I never attended them, but it was still so difficult for me to fathom that this occurred in Lexington.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading what Ms. Banks posted, it was interesting to compare and contrast the different sides of the story.
I noticed that Dr. Ash wrote a very factual and descriptive restatement of the law that Lexington has (supposedly) abided by. It may have been me interpreting the article wrong, but it seemed to be that Dr. Ash was dancing around the actual occurrence a little bit.
Rose's father, however, wrote his reaction more like a story: "I found Rose standing alone on the cement floor of a basement mop closet, illuminated by a single light bulb." It was much more visual and understandable to read.
Clearly the reactions were completely different, but I still believe that any type of punishment of this kind that was reported in any school system should not be an avoided topic. I believe it should be investigated until the victim and the parents are content with the outcome.