Seclusion Rooms and Illegal Exclusion in New Brunswick Schools: Your Rights and Your Response

Your child came home and told you they spent part of the day in a separate room — alone, door closed. Or the school called again before noon to ask you to pick them up. Or their daily schedule has quietly become a partial-day arrangement that nobody ever formally explained or got your agreement on.

This isn't a misunderstanding of policy. New Brunswick's own Child, Youth and Senior Advocate — the independent legislative officer who reports to the provincial assembly, not to the government — has spent the past two years documenting exactly this pattern. Their 2024-2025 reports describe New Brunswick schools operating seclusion rooms "without legal authority," using partial-day plans as de facto exclusions for students whose needs have not been met, and creating a situation in which one in every 200 students is chronically absent because "the school cannot or will not educate them."

The Advocate used the phrase "culture of lawlessness" to describe the provincial system's treatment of students with complex needs.

If your child is part of that pattern, here is what the law actually says and what you can do about it.

What the Law Says About Seclusion

Policy 322 — New Brunswick's inclusive education policy — mandates a common learning environment for all students. It does not authorize schools to place students in isolated rooms as a behavioral management strategy.

The Advocate's investigation found that seclusion rooms in NB schools have been operating in the absence of any provincial policy or regulatory authority permitting them. There is no Policy 322 exception. There is no Education Act provision. These rooms were being used because they were convenient, not because any law allowed them.

This means that if your child was placed in a seclusion room — defined as being physically isolated in a space and not permitted to leave — without your informed consent and without a documented emergency safety protocol, that placement almost certainly violated both Policy 322 and your child's rights under the NB Human Rights Act.

What "Informed Consent" Means Here

Some schools have asked parents to sign forms agreeing to seclusion as part of a behavioral plan. Be aware:

• Consent to seclusion as a routine strategy is not the same as consent to emergency physical de-escalation procedures
• If you signed something you didn't fully understand, that signature does not retroactively authorize repeated use
• If a seclusion arrangement was presented as standard practice or routine, ask the school to show you the specific provincial policy that authorizes it. They cannot, because no such policy exists for routine use.

What the Law Says About Partial-Day Plans

Policy 323 (Partial School Days) is the provincial policy that governs when a student can be placed on a reduced school day. Its requirements are specific and all of them are mandatory:

Tier 1, 2, and 3 interventions must be documented and exhausted first. A partial-day plan is only available as a last resort after genuine attempts at Tier 1 (classroom-level supports), Tier 2 (targeted interventions), and Tier 3 (intensive individualized supports) have been tried and documented. A school cannot place a student on a partial-day plan because they don't have enough EA hours.

The district superintendent must provide a formal written rationale. Not the principal. Not the EST-Resource coordinator. The superintendent. This rationale must explain why all other options have been exhausted.

The maximum duration is 90 days. A partial-day plan cannot become a permanent arrangement. At 90 days, it must be formally reviewed and either ended or replaced with a full education plan.

A return-to-full-day plan with dates must be documented from day one. The purpose of a partial-day arrangement, under Policy 323, is temporary stabilization. There must be a written plan for what the school will do to get the student back to full-day attendance — and when.

If your child's partial-day plan does not meet all of these conditions, it is not in legal compliance with provincial policy.

What "Chronic Absence" Really Means

The Advocate's office reported a 29.3% chronic absenteeism rate in New Brunswick schools for 2025-2026. A significant portion of that absence is not students choosing to stay home — it is students who have been excluded or pushed out through partial-day plans, repeated early pickups, and informal arrangements that are never formalized into the Policy 323 process because formalizing them would require the school to document that they are not meeting the required conditions.

The practical effect is that students with the highest needs are receiving the least education, and many of their parents are accepting this because they don't know it's illegal.

Your Response: Immediate Steps

If seclusion is happening now:

1. Request a meeting with the principal in writing within 24 hours. State specifically that you are aware your child was placed in an isolated room and that you are requesting a full explanation, including the specific policy authority the school is relying on.

2. Request your child's complete behavioral incident log through a RTIPPA request to the district. This often reveals how frequently seclusion was used, when it started, and whether it was ever disclosed to you.

3. Contact the Office of the Child, Youth and Senior Advocate directly at www.defenseur-nb-advocate.ca. Describe the situation clearly: your child's age, disability, what is happening, how long it has been happening, and what the school has said about it. The Advocate's office has ongoing investigations into exactly this pattern and can act quickly in acute situations.

4. File a complaint with the NB Human Rights Commission if the seclusion is ongoing. The 12-month filing window applies to each incident, not just the first one.

If a partial-day plan is in place:

1. Immediately request in writing: (a) the formal written rationale from the district superintendent, (b) documentation of the Tier 1, 2, and 3 intervention attempts with dates, (c) the written return-to-full-day plan with target dates.

2. If the school cannot produce all three documents, the partial-day arrangement is not in compliance with Policy 323. State that in writing.

3. File an Education Act appeal. For placement decisions under Section 12, you have ten days from receiving written notice. A partial-day plan that was communicated verbally — which is common — is still a placement decision. Put the date you became aware of it in writing and file within ten days.

4. Contact Inclusion NB (1-866-622-2548). They have Social Inclusion Coordinators who specifically handle situations involving partial-day exclusions and can intervene at the district level.

5. File simultaneously with the Child, Youth and Senior Advocate. Their 2024-2025 investigation has been specifically focused on this pattern. They will recognize your situation.

The School's Most Common Response

When confronted with documentation requests about seclusion or incomplete partial-day procedures, schools typically offer one of three responses:

"This is what we've always done." That is not a legal authorization. The Advocate's findings are explicit that these practices have been operating outside any legal framework.

"We don't have enough staff to do anything else." Staffing shortfalls do not satisfy the legal threshold for the duty to accommodate. Under the NB Human Rights Act, the school must demonstrate genuine undue hardship — not just that they're under-resourced. Thousands of NB schools are under-resourced. That does not change what they owe your child.

"This arrangement was agreed to." Ask them to produce the written consent form, signed by you, that specifically authorized the use of seclusion or this specific partial-day schedule. If you never signed such a document — or if you signed something you didn't understand — that claim is contestable.

The Broader Context

New Brunswick's school psychologist ratio is approximately 1 per 13,000 students — the national recommendation is 1 per 1,000. The province has about 15% of the psychologists it needs to properly assess and support students with complex learning needs. Educational Assistants are assigned to classrooms, not to individual students, and are frequently reallocated without notice.

These are real systemic constraints. But they are the province's problem to solve — not a justification for excluding your child from their right to education. The Education Act Section 12, Policy 322, and the NB Human Rights Act do not include a resource-shortage exception.

The advocacy community in New Brunswick — Inclusion NB, the Child, Youth and Senior Advocate, the Learning Disabilities Association of NB — is actively engaged on these issues at a systemic level. Individual parent complaints that are filed formally, documented carefully, and escalated through the right channels contribute to that systemic pressure.

The New Brunswick Special Ed Advocacy Playbook includes the specific Policy 323 checklist, RTIPPA request templates, and the formal complaint letters for the Advocate's office and the Human Rights Commission — written to address the exclusion and seclusion patterns the Advocate's office has been actively investigating.

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