VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Virginia Beach School Board last week voted to ban the use of seclusion rooms in buildings owned by the city’s school system, even if those rooms are in use by contractors and not by the school division itself.
The decision comes after a Virginia Beach mother filed a $150 million lawsuit against Southeastern Cooperative Educational Programs (SECEP), alleging her 11-year-old son, who had autism, was mistreated at Virginia Beach’s Pembroke Elementary School just days before he died.
The complaint included pictures of what the lawsuit alleges was a space where the child was confined: boxed in with furniture bound together with heavy-duty straps…