Former McAuliffe International School student shares de-escalation experience in the wake of investigation into "seclusion rooms"

17-year-old Sedik Mote says it is surprising to hear allegations of students being locked in rooms at McAuliffe International School.  

"I'm in disbelief," said Mote. "Because when I was going to school there, I never heard or saw anything like that, and I was never put in a room myself, and I don't believe they had one." 

Sedik had an Individualized Education Program when he attended McAuliffe from 2018 to 2021.  

"He did have some struggles," said Jessie Hawthorn, Sedik's mother. "He had had a serious conflict that almost became physical with a teacher at one point. A couple of times he got in fights at PE with other kids. 

However, both he and his mother say he was never isolated from the rest of his peers or left alone to de-escalate.  

"When I was having problems, sometimes they'd take me to this room where there is this punching bag which they let me use and they also had a section with pillows that we could sit in, and they had a therapy dog," said Sedik.  

However, Denver Public Schools school board members say this has not been the case for other students. They say whistleblowers allege at least three students at McAuliffe have been placed in a room with a lock on the outside of the door.

On Monday, DPS officials confirmed this violates administrative policy. While the district does have de-escalation rooms for students, officials say they are not seclusion rooms.

"Those terms are really used interchangeably and so very often when people are talking about one, they're talking about both," said Franci Crepeau-Hobson, Professor of School Psychology at the University of Colorado Denver.

Crepeau-Hobson says kids should never be put in a room, particularly with a door as a means of disciplining them.

"I would love for us not to need seclusion rooms and I don't think we should be locking kids in rooms ever," she said.

"Obviously, it's not a cookie cutter intervention, and I think that's one of the biggest issues that we're starting to see with this type of intervention," said Alex Castro Croy.

Croy is a Trauma and Addiction Specialist who has worked with de-escalating youth. He argues, even if not intended to serve as a means of seclusion, any room designated to separate a child—locked or not—could create more harm than good.

"The intent is to help them separate the kid from general population so that they won't hurt them. However, what we're actually doing is triggering a lot of times major trauma that they're experiencing in their body," said Croy.

"[It's] rejection, betrayal, abandonment and shame, and so any perceived threat that brings up these traumatic effects in our body are going to lead to these types of behavior in acting out."

Crepeau-Hobson says schools should, instead, focus on creating safe open spaces and using physical restraint by a trained individual only as a last resort.

"It can be helpful for kinds to have a safe space that doesn't have a lot of stimulation, where people are getting in their face for them to continue to calm down," she said. "If we have to keep them safe physically, proper use of restraint in rare rare circumstances by trained individuals is what happens in schools."

While the investigation remains ongoing as to the allegations of a "seclusion room," Sedik says it is hard to imagine something like that taking place in an environment he says helped him so much.

"If anything, that school helped me more than any school I've been to, and the people there I feel like they actually really cared about their students," said Sedik.

While the district says there is a difference between what they deem a seclusion room versus a de-escalation room, a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education tells CBS Colorado there is no such thing as the term "de-escalation room" in state or federal law. The state did, however, pass rules last spring regarding seclusion and restraint, which includes the following requirements:

Any space in which a student is secluded must have adequate lighting, ventilation, and size. To the extent possible under the specific circumstances, the space should be free of injurious items.  

If public education agency uses a seclusion room, there must be at least one window for monitoring when the door is closed. If a window is not feasible, monitoring must be possible through a video camera. A student placed in a seclusion room must be continually monitored. The room must be a safe space free of injurious items. The seclusion room must not be a room that is used by school staff for storage, custodial, or office space.