WATCH: School District Accused of Putting Disabled Students in Wooden Crates
Every major failure in public education follows the same pattern: administrators become fluent in slogans while their most basic duties collapse.
The unfolding scandal in the Salmon River Central School District is a case study in how a system that advertises “values” can fail students in practice—spectacularly, expensively, and with little accountability.
Salmon River Central School District serves roughly 1,300 students in Fort Covington, New York, near the Canadian border. The district spends approximately $41 million annually, translating to about $29,000 per student. Under any reasonable standard, that level of funding should produce strong academic outcomes and attentive student support.
Instead, just 16% of students are proficient in math and only 25% in reading on state exams. Those numbers reflect a deeper systemic failure that extends far beyond this single district and across much of the public education system.
Yet a visit to the district’s public-facing materials tells a different story. The front page of the district’s website prominently emphasizes diversity, language, and institutional values, projecting moral seriousness and cultural awareness.
That messaging now stands in stark contrast to allegations that elementary students with disabilities were confined in wooden “timeout” boxes—structures parents described as resembling small padded cells.
According to reporting confirmed by local outlets, district officials are under investigation after images circulated on social media showing wooden enclosures built inside two elementary schools.
The district acknowledged that three such crates existed, claiming they were never used and have since been dismantled.
Parents told a very different story at a community meeting, alleging that their children were placed inside the boxes as a form of seclusion.
One parent of a minimally verbal child said his son described the structures as a place students were sent “to calm down,” regardless of emotional state.
That description alone should alarm anyone familiar with special education law.
Federal and state regulations strictly govern the use of seclusion and restraint, particularly for students with disabilities. Wooden crates—no matter how administrators attempt to label them—appear nowhere in those guidelines.
The seriousness of the allegations is compounded by the district’s demographics. More than 60% of students are Native American.
For families in the region, the reports evoke painful historical memories of abusive residential school systems that focused on control rather than education.
Native American students are among the lowest-performing demographic groups in the United States by nearly every academic metric.
When Democrats respond to that reality by simply throwing more money at the system—without reform, oversight, or accountability—the results often worsen rather than improve.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul called the allegations “highly disturbing” and “entirely unacceptable,” urging swift action by the state education department.
The district’s board placed three officials on leave and reassigned the superintendent to home duties while the investigation proceeds. Board President Jason Brockway issued an apology, claiming the allegations do not reflect the district’s values or standards of care.
But apologies and press statements do not address the underlying problem.
The real issue is not only whether the crates were used. It is how a district with massive per-pupil spending, a favorable 9-to-1 student-teacher ratio, and constant rhetorical emphasis on equity could allow conditions where such measures were even conceived.
This is the disconnect parents across the country increasingly recognize.
Public school systems insist they are underfunded while spending reaches historic highs. They elevate diversity, equity, and inclusion language while core outcomes—literacy, numeracy, and student safety—deteriorate.
When scandals surface, administrators frame them as isolated incidents rather than symptoms of systemic dysfunction.
Salmon River’s academic data makes that clear. Spending nearly $30,000 per student while fewer than one in four students read proficiently is not a funding problem.
It is a governance problem.
It reflects priorities skewed toward administration, consultants, and political messaging instead of effective instruction and student care. When oversight erodes, the most vulnerable students pay the price first.
None of this indicts teachers broadly or denies the challenges of educating students with complex needs. But it does demand honesty.
A system that celebrates values it cannot operationalize is not virtuous—it is negligent. Diversity statements do not substitute for lawful, humane treatment of children. Budgets do not equal results.
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