Parents Greg and Jennifer Fell say they were shocked to discover their son Payden was restrained and secluded in a room for over an hour at his school in Texas.
Children who misbehave in some schools are being shut away into rooms, known as “seclusion rooms,” a legal but controversial method for handling special-needs students in crisis. It is meant to be used in extreme situations when a child is putting themselves or others in danger, but some parents say some schools are going too far.
Greg and Jennifer Fell say they were shocked to discover their son Payden, who has behavioral issues from a rare brain tumor, was restrained and secluded in a room for over an hour at his school in Texas.
"His fight or flight instinct is so strong, that if he feels threatened, he'll go all in," Jennifer says.
In surveillance footage obtained by Inside Edition, 12-year-old Payden can be heard screaming as school staff hold him down with his hands behind his back. “Let go of me,” Payden can be heard saying.
A staff member can also be seen entering the room eating a snack while Payden, wearing a spit mask, calls out in distress.
“I just want to go through that video and grab my kid and bring him home to safety,” Jennifer says.
The parents say the incident started because Payden was spitting at a teacher, but they believe the school went too far.
“We are not the parents that say, ‘Our kid is perfect. How dare you say he’s done something wrong?’ We deal with things like this at home too so we know what they have to deal with. Payden’s disability cannot be scared out of him,” Jennifer says.
Payden’s school says the employees in the surveillance video no longer work there and the school has retrained their staff.
Across the United States, an estimated 2,300 students are restrained and put into seclusion rooms every school day for misbehavior, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Sometimes that offense can be for something small, like throwing a pencil. Sometimes, violent behavior is involved.
In some cases, school restraints have even turned deadly.
In 2020 Cornelius Frederick, 16, threw a sandwich in a Michigan school lunchroom. Video shows employees restraining him for 12 minutes. Two days later, Frederick, who suffered from behavioral issues, died in the hospital from cardiac arrest.
The school's license was revoked and two of the employees involved pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
"It is a inhumane and barbaric practice," Brian Calley, Michigan's former lieutenant governor tells Inside Edition. Michigan is a state with one of the highest numbers of restraints and seclusions in the U.S., with over 90,000 cases since 2017.
"We owe it to our kids, especially kids with disabilities that have so many odds stacked against them, to stop these practices and replace them with a supportive environment that understands and has a professional response that helps to solve problems and get them back on track," Calley says.
Jebrina Sturdivant of Michigan says her 11-year-old son Jaylen was violently restrained at his former school last year after pushing another student.
"We are traumatizing these kids."You're not gonna get a kid to cooperate with you by throwing them in a room or grabbing them and slamming them down to the ground," Sturdivant says.
The Michigan mother says her son was held face down on the ground by school staff and came home with bruises on his back.
"It wasn't the first time. It was just the first time that he actually came home and said something to me about it," Sturdivant says.
Jaylen's former school tells Inside Edition they can not comment on the specific incident but they are committed to the health and safety of every student.
Linda Herman says her special-needs son was restrained and secluded more than 180 times at his former Maryland school over the course of a year and a half.
Surveillance video from 2015 shows one incident of school staff dragging the 8-year-old down a hallway and shutting him inside a seclusion room.
"A normal 7 or 8-year-old locked in a closet would be scared to death. Imagine a child functioning at a 3-year-old or 4-year-old level," Herman says.
Staff returned to the room after 10 minutes to find him face down on the floor and lying in his own blood.
"It just adds to the trauma that already was there. It's just unexplained break of trust. I don't, I mean, who sends their child to school for that to happen," Herman says.
He had injured himself and had to be taken out in a wheelchair.
“This isn't a rare thing. The rare thing is that I went to school the next day and demanded the video," Herman says. "This is happening a lot to a lot of kids. I just happened to get the video."
Inside Edition reached out to the school for comment multiple times but did not receive a response.
Sturdivant is urging for change.
"We don't want our kid to die in order for you to hear our story. We want somebody to step up step in and handle it," Sturdivant says.
