By ajudd [at] ajc [dot] com (Alan Judd)

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tina King always asked her son Jonathan about his day at the Alpine Program, a public school in Gainesville for students with behavioral problems. Jonathan would answer with the indifferent shrug of adolescence. “It was school,” he would say.

Jonathan, 13, never mentioned the stark 8-by-8 concrete-block room where he spent hours alone, locked up for misbehaving. Alpine called it the time-out room, and it offered neither distraction nor stimulation. No windows. No furniture. No bathroom. No food. No water.