The parents of three students have filed a lawsuit against Milwaukee Public Schools and several employees at Thurston Woods School, alleging their children were taken to the school’s boiler room — referred to as the “dungeon” — and confined there to intimidate and punish them.
In a complaint filed Dec. 8 and later obtained by a national outlet, the parents claim that during the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 school years, staff threatened students at the K4–8 school with being sent to the “dungeon” if they did not behave. The complaint alleges employees said they would call a paraprofessional — also named as a defendant — “to take the students to the ‘dungeon’ and lock them inside with the lights turned off so that it would be pitch black. The students would be left inside with no ability to leave as form of punishment.”
The lawsuit describes the “dungeon” as a basement-level boiler room that was loud due to the boiler running. The complaint also alleges the room posed hazards because chemical and cleaning agents were stored there…