AMHERST — Using feedback from families whose children have been placed in time-out or sent to so-called blue rooms and reflection rooms at Fort River School, the Special Education Parent Advisory Committee is issuing recommendations for updating restraint and seclusion practices.
After holding two listening sessions in January, where some families described children being kept in small closets or offices for several hours, the panel, as part of its legal mandate, recently offered advice to the Amherst School Committee, which is already revising the district policy.
SEPAC representative Ellen Jedrey-Guidera told the committee that there are concerns the blue rooms have been used as seclusion or time-out rooms, sometimes for behavioral modification purposes, and not just for emergency situations where students pose an imminent danger to themselves, and occasionally for several hours at a time.
According to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, a time-out is defined as a temporary break to calm down, either chosen by the student or directed by staff, while seclusion is defined as confining a student alone in a space they can’t leave.
Policy changes coming for the 2026-2027 school year clarify the difference between time-out and seclusion; allow emergency seclusion only if there’s an immediate threat of serious harm, parents give prior consent, a medical/mental health professional is involved and the student is continuously monitored; and require documentation, oversight, and parent notification.
“Restraint and seclusion policies and practices have a profound impact on our children that can last for years or in some instances a lifetime,” Jedrey-Guidera said.
The SEPAC recommendations include shifting schools toward a greater understanding of students with disabilities based on neuroscience, neuroaffirming and trauma-informed practices, more in-depth training, improved data collection, and the use of one-way mirrors and/or cameras and two-person monitoring in the reflection rooms.
Revisions to the district policy are needed to bring the schools into compliance with a change in state regulations taking effect on Aug. 17, including a 30-minute limit on how long a student can be placed in a blue room.
At the Feb. 24 meeting, Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman suggested a shift in the narrative that restraint is a disciplinary procedure, compliance tool or behavior management strategy.
“Student and staff safety is a top priority for me, and this is one that will affect both students and staff,” Herman said.
Prior to the meeting, Herman wrote a memo providing an update on the work being done:
“This is an area that requires both legal precision and moral clarity,” Herman wrote. “The safety of our students and staff is non-negotiable, and our responsibility is to ensure that restraint remains a true last-resort intervention, used only when there is imminent risk of serious physical harm.”
That memo notes that the district will be working with the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on the specific guidance, as well as with its legal team, and is also responding directly to community concerns:
“At the same time, we must acknowledge another reality: we have experienced incidents in which staff have been seriously injured while attempting to protect students or de-escalate unsafe situations. Any updated procedures must balance two truths — students must be protected from inappropriate restraint, and staff must be protected from serious injury.”
Frequency of restraints
Jo Ann Smith, student services administrator, provided statistics showing that about 70% of restraints — with 32 or 33 occurring across the town’s three elementary schools this school year — last for 4 minutes or less.
“We have amazing staff who are really committed, and there’s always places for us to improve and do better,” Smith said. “And we do not want to provide physical supports, but we have to in some instances, and it is very real that we have had staff get hurt prior to a restraint.”
At Fort River, Principal Tamera Sullivan-Daley explained that the staff brings knowledge to the situations. “Everyone is safety care trained,” Sullivan-Daley said.
Any time physical management occurs, she said, the team afterward figures out what happened and what could be done differently.
School Committee member Bridget Hynes, who has been working on bringing the policy into compliance, said she holds the view that seclusion and restraint are incompatible with the physical and emotional well-being of students, adding that many schools don’t have time-out rooms or perform restraints.
“I’ve been driven by these firsthand heartbreaking accounts that I’ve heard from families. I’ve heard many of these stories much earlier in the school year,” Hynes said. She described the testimony as devastating, adding that students deserve an education free from harm.
In general, Hynes said compliance isn’t enough; the revised policy will confront the patterns of harm, promote safety and trust with children, and build partnerships with families.
Already, the Joint Policy Subcommittee has received 100 comments.
“Knowing what we know, I think everyone agrees we have a responsibility to do better for students, for families and for staff,” Hynes said.
Committee member Laura Jane Hunter said she is really concerned and found narratives from families “haunting,” adding she feels there are systemic problems that have been identified, and, despite the care from staff, a broken system exists.
“It’s so upsetting, testimony from families not being allowed to access their child who is in a moment of crisis is unbearable to read about,” Hunter said. “And I can’t understand how that was ever allowed to happen in the world we’re in right now.”
“It is clear something is pretty wrong and the first step is admitting that we have a problem and the second one is starting to fix it,” Hunter said.
Karla Reed-McNally, a parent, asked school committee members to visit Fort River’s blue room to understand the student experience before Amethyst Brook School opens.
Reed-McNally called for time limits for how long students can remain in the blue room, strategies to prevent isolation, immediate parent-guardian notification — rather than within 24 hours — and improved training for staff to recognize triggers and to be able to avoid using restraints.
The new school will include four “reflection” rooms, which the committee intends to gather community input on how those rooms will be used.
Educator concerns
While the Feb. 24 meeting was a first reading on changes to the policy, the extensive discussion that took place that evening prompted several educators to respond publicly at the March 10 Amherst Regional School Committee meeting, saying their work with students had been disparaged.
They addressed that committee, which included representatives from Leverett, Shutesbury and Pelham, even though the members have no jurisdiction over the Amherst elementary schools.
Jessica Rudnick, a school psychologist in the Building Blocks and Academic Inclusive Mainstream Support, or AIMS program, at Fort River School, read a statement on behalf of program teachers in that school building.
“As educators, we were publicly shamed by our employer of record, our integrity was publicly questioned, and in effect we were labeled as incompetent in our abilities to do the difficult work we do each day,” Rudnick said. “While we fully recognize there is always opportunity for growth and improvement, it was incredibly disappointing to be targeted with animosity and contempt by the very community which we diligently serve.”
“Instead of encouraging a productive dialogue to explore concerns, the School Committee meeting was allowed to become a venue for publicly chastising educators who support some of our most vulnerable students,” she continued. “The School Committee shared no understanding or acknowledgment that any school would be challenged with the intensity of explosive behaviors which we support each day. This public humiliation took place without any opportunity to present a balanced perspective.”
Jasmine Bush, a paraprofessional at Fort River, concluded a presentation by several other educators who expressed similar concerns about the way they were treated at the earlier meeting.
“In short, we find many of the public comments from the last committee meeting insulting and lacking in perspective. We were blindsided by the way our schools and our programs were spoken about,” Bush said. “The comments have significantly damaged the relationship between Fort River program staff and the wider Amherst community.”
Their comments pointed out that Fort River, since September, has lost a fifth-grade classroom teacher, a full-time Board Certified Behavior Analyst responsible for student behavior plans and data collection, a Building Blocks and AIMS program coordinator and a bilingual occupational therapist.
“The dismissal of further perspectives by certain committee members is not in line with the spirit of public committee meetings,” Bush said. “We have a shared desire for our elementary students to feel safe, valued as individuals, and to have the coping skills they will need to be successful throughout school and into adulthood. It is our hope that in sharing the struggles we are facing that our staffing issues will be corrected, that specific concerns about student safety are submitted both promptly and directly so that they can be addressed, and that the community recognizes how passionate and dedicated each of us is to give our students the tools they need to thrive.”