Alone in a school social worker’s office, forced to remain inside but wailing to leave, Amanda’s 7-year-old son grabbed up a butter knife and picked at the room’s door handle.

That day in 2017 was a turning point for Amanda, marking the moment that seclusion — the act of isolating a child in crisis alone in a room — transformed and traumatized her son. The Free Press is only using Amanda’s first name, to protect the privacy of her son.

As years passed, Amanda became angry.

And curious.

Curious about how often Farmington Schools, the district he attended, used seclusion and restraint on all of its students with disabilities — students like her son, who has autism.

Michigan educators have secluded and restrained students nearly 94,000 times over the past five school years, a Free Press investigation found. Among the students who are subjected to those tactics, 4 out of 5 have a disability. Under state law, these tactics are supposed to be used only as a last resort in emergencies, though some records indicate that educators are turning to these tactics in nonemergency situations.

Amanda, aware that taxpayer-funded organizations such as school districts must follow public records laws, requested documents that would include the details of every instance of seclusion and restraint in the district from 2017 to 2021. Farmington administrators responded with an invoice for $3,362, claiming it would take 88.75 hours to find the records and then black out students’ names and other...

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