Same story-- different year...

[CMdeux]

It just boggles my mind that the same thing keeps happening over... and over...

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/should_schools_designate_schoo.html

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/02/portland_school_board_votes_ag_1.html

My thoughts:

this is Oregon.  I'm so not surprised. The overwhelming prevailing attitude here is-- and has always been-- "What?  So don't eat my lunch, then..."  or some other variant of "teach your kid what she can't eat."  Which, as we all know-- is so laughably inadequate for her personally.  My kid is one who has had very severe allergic reactions from unknown (but not "ingestion" in terms of mistaking safe food) exposures-- probably environmental traces picked up on her hands.  Now, I certainly HOPE that this is not the case for the child in question.

Secondly, why the hell is the SCHOOL BOARD making decisions about the accommodations afforded to a particular child with a disabling condition??  Do they also vote on whether or not a child with a seizure disorder has an aide on the bus?  Whether or not a deaf child has accommodations for state testing?  No?  Well then why is THIS being played out in the court of public opinion, either, then?   


What I really wanted to do, though, is call out a particularly jaw-dropping sequence of quotes...

Administrators, including Superintendent Carole Smith, said the district was following recommendations from some national experts who say that designating a school as "nut-free" could lull students into a false sense of security.

Smith said some national experts say it’s more dangerous to claim a school is “peanut-free” because you can’t actually ensure that.

“The national recommended practice is that you’re teaching someone to handle this in an environment that they’re in their entire life,” Smith said.

This is an elementary school.  K and 1st.   

I'd love to take Carole Smith and Anne Munoz-Furlong and bang their heads together to knock some sense into them both. 

These are kids who are eating in their classrooms.  The DISTRICT is supplying those children with PEANUT BUTTER.

 

[ajasfolks2]

Carole Smith needs to be challenged in writing to disclose ALL the names (and credentials) of the "national experts" and when/where this "false sense of security" as to pnut bans was proclaimed.

It could be email or at a school board meeting.

Then the emails could be released via FOIA request.

[CMdeux]

Agreed.

Steve Buel's comment on the article:

The whole argument was whether or not to continue to send approximately 10 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into one school. The school, Beverly Cleary at Hollyrood, has no cafeteria and is a k-1 overcrowded school. All I and the mother were asking was they send in a different sandwich -- nothing more. The first grader has a severe, life-threatening allergy complicated by asthma where even a miniscule amount of peanut butter ingested can easily kill him. And even direct contact with peanut butter may kill him. By sending these sandwiches on a daily basis throughout the school the district sets up a virtual minefield for this small child. Peanut butter sticks to everything. I don't want to hear about the parents need to train him -- they are marvelous at it. I don't want to hear about putting him in a very dangerous environment so he learns to live with it. You don't purposely risk your child's life without reason. And national experts who talk about these situations don't talk about a k-l school which has no cafeteria. The other parents in the school and the teachers have been marvelously cooperative. But the district refuses to make a minimal and easily made adjustment. That is what the argument was about -- not if his face swells up, not if he gets a tummy ache, not if he breaks out in hives, but if we refuse to make a minor change which hugely decreases the threat of death for this child. I say, why not do what is right when the cost is so little? Yes, he will have to learn to navigate the world which won't adjust to his allergy. He will have to adjust. But maybe we should wait until he is a little older than a first grader before we make it hard for him to stay alive and burden his mother with the death of another child.

Yep-- he gets it.  It's "reduction of risk."

Also-- reduction of PPS liability for a first grader in their care.

To continue sending those sandwiches into that environment is frankly depraved indifference and recklessness.  There is almost NO legitimate fiscal argument for it.  Not for that particular K-1 campus.

[twinturbo]

That's so 2005.

[CMdeux]

Indeed.

But this is the environment that I refused to send DD into at 5yo-- I mean, sure-- we're down the road a few clicks, but the bottom line is that our district has the same approach-- PB&J supplied BY the district, in every school in the district, EVERY day of the year.

The amount of the stuff-- in residue alone-- in school buildings here?  Yeah-- no wonder that DD can't even be IN those buildings.

It's just so exhausting to think that so little has changed in the level of ignorance surrounding the tiny amounts needed to elicit fatal reactions, the notion that environmental controls ARE helpful-- I mean, c'mon, Canadian studies have actually SHOWN that reducing the risk like this works in primary grades-- the whole thing just makes me feel...

 

[twinturbo]

It's identical for milk in sped and Title II preschool, here, I mean. I haven't quite yet decided to bring the roof down on them. Yet.

[twinturbo]

On the topic of school boards I'm following one in Cali, PAUSD for disability harassment. Has nothing to do with food allergies. Anyhow, the whole time the BOE spent ridiculous amounts of time and money (arguably the same) to investigate how they could fight the OCR's investigation and subsequent findings, complaining the whole time about why of why did they have government intrusion.

Hmm, that's a real mystery. Could it be, oh, I don't know, maybe those federal tax dollars you run on? The ones you're wasting trying to fight against the oversight instead of addressing the persistent disability harassment of your students? Hands, flashlight, your butt, the dark.

Fiefdoms, emo fiefdoms.

[twinturbo]

Noting up front that the APS brought up on state RICO charges for cheating the NCLB system for increased funding is really the most extreme example, it's worthy of considering the funding revolving the per pupil allocation assigned per student and not the district itself (to an extent).

In cases where the school will not accommodate they certainly should not receive anything for that student's allocation. In a distantly related fashion OCR has the ability to suspend a recipient's federal funds. In both instances it's funding for questionable delivery of standardized education. It's interesting enough to me that the NCLB part of my special ed law books I've left untouched bear more attention.