Remember Bill Lichtenstein?

The man who introduced isolation rooms into Lexington’s lexicon has won an award for the unsettling New York Times piece that detailed his daughter’s experience as a young special education student in town. 

Bill Lichtenstein burst onto the scene at the start of the 2012-2013 school year with the publication of “A Terrible Way to Discipline Children,” which alleges, among other things, that his then-5-year-old daughter was left alone in a basement mop closet of a Lexington elementary school. And ss school year came to a close, he was climbing back into the news as the piece was recognized among the 2013 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism.

A project of the Journalism Center on Children and Families at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, the Casey Medals recognize reporting on children, youth and families.

Lichtenstein’s “A Terrible Way to Discipline Children” received Honorable Mention in the Opinion category.

From the JCCF press release:

After learning that his 5-year-old daughter had been repeatedly locked in a converted closet in her elementary school, the author exposed the largely unknown use of seclusion rooms and physical restraints as forms of punishment in schools around the U.S. The piece attracted a flood of media attention to the issue, sparked tremendous response from readers, and helped coalesce a national effort to end these practices and promote positive behavior interventions in schools.

At the time of its publication and in the weeks that followed, Lichtenstein’s New York Times piece was both influential and controversial. 

Some details of the piece were disputed by the Lexington Public Schools administration. And some found it disconcerting that Litchenstein set up websites using his daughter’s name in the URL and did not speak with his ex-wife—and custodial parent of their child—before publishing in the Times.  

Still, “A Terrible Way to Discipline Children” sparked conversation around special education here and across the country.

Within days of the piece’s publication, parents and children came forward and told their stories of the use of restraint and isolation rooms in Lexington – including some more recent than the 2005-2006 school year, the timeframe in Lichtenstein’s report.

Meetings and discussions were held, and Superintendent of Schools Paul Ash asked the state Department of Children and Families to investigate reports of students being left in “time out” rooms.