Just dont get too close to the sharfer-senf...
Posted on 09/10/2003 6:35:59 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
An elementary school's reaction to one student's allergy to peanuts has parents complaining about "Nazi-like" peanut police searching their children's backpacks.
Angry parents packed a parent-teacher meeting last night at Valle Verde Elementary School in Walnut Creek, Calif., to protest the school's new "peanut reduction policy."
Under the policy, kindergarten classrooms and a special playground area have been designated "peanut- and tree nut-free zones." Students and visitors are required to wash their hands. Backpacks and lunch boxes are searched and peanut products are confiscated.
The policy is in response to lobbying by parent Leora Cope, whose 5-year-old son's allergy is so severe that even peanut butter residue left on the playground monkey bars could send him into anaphylactic shock. Cope's family demanded the Mt. Diablo school district accommodate their son under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the federal regulation known as Section 504.
The Copes had wanted peanuts banned from the entire school campus. The reduction policy was adopted as a compromise.
The district also hired a health aide to spend 30 hours a week training staff members in the use of an Epipen, an adrenaline injector that assists people who go into anaphylactic shock.
"Everyone's going to do the best they can to keep him safe, as they would any child," district spokeswoman Sue Berg told the Contra Costa Times, pointing out that Valle Verde's policy is less restrictive than others. "There are whole schools that have declared themselves peanut-free."
But parents questioned why hundreds of children must lose the traditional lunchtime staple over one child's allergy.
"If their child has such severe allergies, I suggest that they home-school their child," the local paper quotes parent Carol Gross as saying. "I would like to know what this family does out in the world. They expect over 600 families to conform to their unfortunate situation, not to mention the cost of the already financially suffering school district to have a nurse appointed solely to attend to the needs of one child."
Some parents are considering keeping their kindergarteners home from school for a day to demonstrate their displeasure over the nut ban.
Parent, Amy Casey, has started a protest petition to promote "dialogue" with the district.
"There have to be reasonable accommodations," Casey said. "[But] they're searching my kid's backpack. There's no reading specialist, but [they hired] a 30-hour-a-week aide who's a nurse?"
"What we're talking about is life or death, not hives," countered PTA president Kim Moore. "For this year, we have this little person who needs us to take really good care of him, and there's plenty of case law out there."
Basically.
I agree, he should be homeschooled for his own safety. But calling him a freak? A little over the top. Not like the kid asked for this.
Now, if you were to call his mom a freak, I'd agree with you. :)
Hire an exterminator to fumigate any nearby hives. I remember my elementary school doing this when a hornet's nest was found near the jungle gym. But that's beside the point. Children aren't bringing jars full of angry bees to school. They are bringing products containing peanuts.
The world doesn't revolve around l or 2 people. If the allergy is that bad keep them home don't expect the world to stand still.
I'd say the right to life of one or two children outweighs any other child's right to bring Reese's Pieces to school.
Bingo.
I grew up playing in the dirt too. I can't remember how many times as a kid that I'd be playing in the swamp or handling animals and bugs, etc., and then eating without washing my hands (except those few times when my mother made me).
Result was I rarely got sick. In fact, I think I've had the flu maybe a half-dozen times in the last 40 years. Other than that, the only other time I was sick at all was in 1993 when I had a sinus infection. The prescription I got for antibiotics that time was the only prescription I ever had in my life.
I must also say that I never "bundle up" in the winter time. I'll go outside without a hat and gloves constantly, even when it is 10 degrees out. I pretty much wear a simple windbreaker all winter long. It does seem that those who are always bundled up in scarves and mittens are the ones who end up catching colds.
Just dont get too close to the sharfer-senf...
I betcha this woman would vote for Jimmy Carter.
Handcart, you idiot, handcart!! ;)
You're both wrong! It's a handbag!
I'd say so too, but the kid eating the reeces pieces isn't actively forcing peanuts upon a child allergic to them... This kid, if he is that fragile, should not be in a typical school environment. It is not acceptable to treat every other child and parent as a criminal because one child is frankly too succeptable to a common element. Fact is if he is that succeptable to a common natural element he should not be on the playground.
All this mother has done is basically forced her child into a school environment and made him an outcast from the get go... Glad I'm not this poor kid, having the allergy issues are bad enough, being labeled the freak who took away peanut butter and jelly throughout an entire grade school... might as well have just made him go to school in panties, because he's going to be a target and outcast for the rest of his primary school days.
I raise livestock and have had to adhere to the strictest "perform or be gone" rule. Prolapsed uteruses, assisted births, soft hooves, entropian eyelid, mastitis, poor feed conversion.......you name it, they are gone. For that reason I have the largest, meatiest, lowest input lambs around. Did you ever stop to think what we are causing every time we do a casarean birth? Keep a person with AIDS around for 20 years? Use technology to allow infertile or diabetic women the opportunity to create more of the same?
I'm not saying that as human beings we should not, but we do need to remember the consequences.
A robust gene pool is a harsh master. There are not many weaknesses that can't be selectively bred out of a given population. Sounds Nazi-like doesn't it? But so does confiscating zeee peanuts ya voll. "Can vee see your peanut free papers achtung!"
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