(NewsNation) — Parents in upstate New York are outraged and an investigation is underway after school staff were accused of using wooden boxes built for special needs students as punishment.
The boxes, lined with a padded mat, were allegedly used as a behavioral calming measure at St. Regis Mohawk School, a primary school in Akwesasne, New York.
“I’m going to call them what they are: child-sized holes,” parents Chrissy Onientatahse Jacobs told NewsNation’s “Morning in America.”
Jacobs, a former Salmon River School District board member, said she posted photos of the wooden box on social media after receiving the images from someone who worked inside the school.
The school’s board of directors closed the campus last week after launching an investigation. The superintendent of schools was placed on at-home duties, and other staff have been placed on administrative leave pending further notice.
The allegations have made national headlines and garnered the attention of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who called the incident “alarming and entirely unacceptable.”
The school district is predominantly Native American, and Jacobs says the investigation is “a direct relation to what happens when you dehumanize any population or demographic of people. Eventually, we just become statistics on a paper for funding.”