Ontario schools should allow students with asthma to carry puffers with them in case of emergencies, says the mother of a 12-year-old boy who died when no one could get his inhaler in time because it was locked in the principal’s office.
As outrageous as this story is, the school isn’t the problem. That we have an entire generation of parents who will stand passively aside while a school confiscates a child’s life-saving medication is the problem.
Exactly, Kate. I’m a father-to-be and I like to think that if my kid needed medication like that at school and the school took it away from him, I’d a) kick the principal’s @$$ from here to Kingdom Come, b) take my kid out of that school never to go back, and c) go to the media describing the absurdity of the rule.
a) and b) would make the situation right for my kid, and c) would hopefully make it right for *all* kids as, as we all know, sunlight on such stupidity is the best disinfectant.
I agree that the big problem is parents allowing progressives to do what they want.
However, how many people have the guts, time, and cash to stand up to the thugs of the gargantuan state?
Whomever instituted this policy should be charged with murder.
Name the school, please.
stratfordville public school had to go local as CBC is dumb on the name
The principal and staff members that were ‘just following orders’ should be charged with involuntary manslaughter. Sandra Gibbons should be talking with the Crown Attorney.
Depriving prisoners of war of necessary medicine is considered a war crime, yet an educator felt it was within their purview to do just that. Absolutely sickening.
This looks to be a board policy rather than a provincial one. The article does not state why some schools do not let children manage their own medication. It’s possible parents asked for this to prevent the case where a young child misplaces his/her puffer and can’t be helped during an attack. This kid was 12, so likely old enough to manage his own meds. Still, there should have been a backup inhaler or the inhaler should have been kept somewhere where a number of people had instant access.
Bullying wouldn’t be such an issue in schools if teachers and administrations didn’t model it so perfectly.
You allow them to reach into your homes and arrange your family’s evenings/weekends don’t you?
They tell you your child has to do “homework” by a certain time and parents blindly fight with their children to get it done on time, some even give up and do it for their children. All the while silently agreeing, brainwashing their children into believing that schools/the government/the state’s importance supersedes the family unit.
Policy? I was once explained about school policy and I asked then straight out if they thought policy was actually enforceable like a law. Was anyone going to go to jail if policy wasn’t followed? I also told them that if they tried that not so passive aggressive “my kid will stay in for recess to finish their work ” I would have my lawyer involved tout suite.
Let’s remember that a “policy” is just an arbitrary rule imposed by an authoritarian body to bluster naive victims.
If the province will not file some level of homicide charges, the family should at least file wrongful death suits against the perps.
When you have a situation where an institution must develop a specific policy for every contingency that would otherwise be considered common sense, that institution has out-lived its usefulness.
While this falls short of murder, it is definitely a homicide.
Were we living in anything but a dying, debased husk of a nation there would be several people looking at lengthy prison terms over this.
This is probably one of the most important posts I’ve seen in the blogosphere to date. I have in laws that are ‘public school educators’. She’s a teacher, he’s a principal – and neither of them are fit to shine shoes in a Tranna cat house. You DON’T want to leave your child at the mercy of these unionized morons. These idiots don’t give a rat’s ass about your kid.
Not murder? Willfully withholding medication designed to prevent death- isn’t pre-meditated murder? What other result could there have been? Going through the childs personal effects without permission to confiscate /steal his medication and withhold it until it is ransomed by the parent is willful negligence. These people are culpible. If they killed this child who is next. That policy killed that boy – no more and no less than any bullet.
Education policy is improving?
Instead of brainwashing children to the point of insanity, gifting them a working life of slow death and confusion.(unless the school of hard knocks frees them)
Now they kill the sick children immediately.
Eugenics was very popular in the chattering class.
However look to the bright side, as law and order collapses a parents/communities hands are freed.
All public school policies exist to limit the liability of the teachers, administrators and government.
Not ONE policy in any public school jurisdiction is motivated by concern for the well being of the students or their families.
No one in that school division is going to be taking any responsibility unless the public demands criminal charges.
You can just imagine the finger pointing this morning at the Board, and at the Provincial level. There is no way that anyone at the Board or at the ministry is going to take responsibility for this craziness. They will push it down to the school level. Locking away medication that could and is a life saving issue is beyond the level of decent common sense. I have taken these morons to task on certain things and believe me they seem to always have more energy than you, as you are juggling your work and home life, these idiots just keep putting road blocks up in front of you. You find yourself not only fighting the rule, but also several individuals all the way up the Board director.
That we have an entire generation of parents who will stand passively aside while a school confiscates a child’s life-saving medication is the problem.
The Kate is the real problem. A passive population, so apathetic, its own children become experiments in social experiments by an increasing mad left.While they do nothing but eat the political swill thrown at them. Like pigs in a sty.
In Britain from Police to parents they allow Muslim gangs to prostitute their own progeny for “community cohesion”.
IN Canada we have allowed school boards to use perverts to groom children while making them illiterate to being held captive by bullies in the name of stopping bullies.Letting teachers become”co-Parents” while not even grading them. But heaven help the kid who brings a toy gun or worse a peanut butter & jelly and sandwich to school.
People have allowed socialist Maniacs to take over education.
Parents need to realize that they have WAY more say and power than the teacher or principle will ever let them know. If you come across a situation that is wrong, get your lawyer to forward a letter to the Superintendant. I have gone up the chain of command to the point of starting legal proceedings when my school refused to alter a bus stop even though they were letting kindergarteners off in the middle of a busy road with no sidewalks. School boards are 99% ego and huff and puff and 1% common sense.
No, it’s not murder. There is no evidence that going through the kid’s belongings to take the medication and hold it in a secure location, (tragically, secure even from appropriate access) was intended to result in the child’s death. In fact there is evidence that the school’s actions were intended to prevent harm. Demonstrably, the child’s death was a potential outcome of the stupid policy, and failure to prevent harm was another potential outcome, but that’s not murder. Manslaughter or Criminal Negligence Causing Death are arguable. If there is a conviction, I am sure the resulting sentences will not be sufficient in the view of most of us.
You’re probably right. I am not a lawyer, don’t want to be one. From where I see this, a thousand miles away, it seems that their actions killed that boy.
Dear Vonv;
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but, if the higher-ups want to stall you they’ll just use taxpayers $ to get you (a) to spend way too much fighting them or (b) to give up. Most parents don’t have the time, money or intestinal fortitude to make a public institution their enemy. Because that’s what’ll happen, your relationship with that institution will be forever negative.
In small communities you often can’t get local legal advice to go against the local public institutions perhaps because they have their eyes on one day getting that account.
There is another way. Parents can suck it up and school privately. The results are most often much better and if you home school not as costly as many think. It does require serious commitment. Parents excersizing a private choice will force the public institutions to up their game.
Sincerly,
Miinol Awyer
what the hell….. I have not read this yet. someone other than the child needs to die. outrageous, beyond sensible. there can be no defense of such bullshit.
vonv… those who caused this travesty would need a hell of a lot more than legal advice if it was my child or grandchild. they would get a serious dose of negative from me.
Two words my friends: Home. Schooling.
I have some experience with the highly allergic kid in school thing. Family member’s kid has epi-pen level allergies to quite a few foods. Also serious respiratory allergies to dogs and other furry animals. The child was removed from school when the school decided an autistic kid with a GUIDE DOG needed to be in the same classroom as the epi-pen carrying allergic kid. Its a nice dog, but… asthma!
Documentation out the wazoo and personal visits to the school for more than two interviews availed nothing at preventing the screw-up. They went and did it anyway, not from malice but just from “Oh, I did not think of that!” That’s a quote, not a joke.
You can’t allow your kid to be in the same building with that kind of military-grade stupid. They really will let the kid die, as we see in this case. They will feel bad, but your kid will still be dead.
Unreal.
Stinking do-gooder bureaucrats – let the child die on their alter of ‘Only WE know what’s best for your child’.
In a word, homeschool.
Hope who ever is responsible for this never sleeps well again.
Re Home-schooling, the remedy for homicide is not to remove the future victims to a safe place.
This will be an interesting case to watch.
Having asthma is not a felony, and certainly not punishable by death, regardless of the “policies”.
If the legal enforcement authorities fail to act, they will be seen as condoning the killing of children.
Since the therapeutic index for ventolin is essentially infinite (we have administered it by intravenous infusion in ICUs) I am at a complete loss to imagine what “harm” could have been prevented by taking a ventolin inhaler from a child.
Wait . . . I think I know. Since the typical inhaler is roughly L-shaped and fits in one’s hand it could have been used by a boy to pretend to be a (highly unconvincing) toy Derringer. Maybe some of our lib/lefty commenters could confirm wether this would meet the threshold conditions needed to trigger modern liberal/statist paranoia. In my day we used to carry penknives to school and no one batted an eye.
When I was in high-school I had a very good friend who had a puffer with him at all times, and once in a while he would take a puff. I didn’t even know what it was, or why he was puffing on it, and no-one seemed to care one bit. Life just went on like normal. “Oh, there’s Andrew puffing with that thing again, whatever.”
No matter which way we look at it, the entire educational environment has been utterly destroyed by the left.
Whether it be the evils of “new math”, whole word reading, taking puffers from kids, lack of personal responsibility, stupid policies about bullying, and so on and so on.
Everything the left touches they eventually destroy. They are like a cancer.
I don’t how you fix education. The special interests are so entrenched it is impossible to change anything.
A government with vision could change things, but fat chance we’ll ever see that at the provincial level.
“No matter which way we look at it, the entire educational environment has been utterly destroyed by the left.”
BC, that sums it up well. This story is disgusting. Our society is becoming increasingly sick. It would appear that we are or should be heading for a reset. Resets cause a lot of pain.
Ontario moves another step closer to a new status, that of a failed state.
Criminal prosecution needs to be examined and a civil lawsuit as well.
Each school needs a parent association to supervise the school authorities.
Yes, it takes some time and effort but that is the meaning of democracy. When citizens vacate the field the public servants become public masters.
Ever has it been so.
Submitting to the ideology of Political Correctness produces a regression to before: the Age of Reason, The Age of Science, The Reformation and the Enlightenment, back about 500 years.
Ironically, that was the last time Islamist supremacism was a threat to Western Civilization.
Teachers are now led to believe they are co-parents and many actually believe it and act accordingly. Not much different than 1 kid having a peanut allergy and 500 kids banned from having peanut butter sandwiches in their lunch. It’s a power trip that never runs out of new rules and regulations. What about the millions of students (mostly boys) forced to take Ritalin or not allowed to attend schools because of ADD/ADHD simply because they can’t sit still ? Can’t play to wear off energy as someone could be hurt. No phys ed class as that time is better spent learning to put condoms on cucumbers and anti bullying propaganda.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/does-ritalin-really-help/article12608922/
The numbers are staggering and long term implications still unknown. Many of these “co-parents” don’t even have children and many more might be terrible parents but mission creep has given them powers they now take for granted and we can see that the road to insanity (puffers could be perceived as a weapon or 1 asprin could be perceived as a drug) is littered with idiotic notions that most parents no longer question. Normal parents should do everything in their power to get their kids into private school or home schooling, or be prepared for the next generation of wing nuts, weenies and special snowflakes to spread this disease. Many parents wouldn’t notice because they already have the socialist disease. Should have been nipped in the bud 2 generations ago before the “co-parents” had complete control.
Minno,
Believe it or not, I am in a small town and all my legal advice and legal correspondance came directly from the OHRC. My son has Down syndrome and there is no school board that wants to take on the
OHRC. The CHRC, OHRC,and the UN of all places have tons of law and policy that will do a lot more damage to a board than the cost of accommodating one child. It took two days after a notice telling the board a file had been opened for that bus stop to get moved. Any child that has any type of special need is a boards worst nightmare. All my arguing was kept totally at board level and did not affect my child’s daily contacts at his school.
Seriously, parents have more power and resources than they know. My son is getting a lot of “perks” this year after wrangling about another issue at board level. They keep me happy because they know I am aware of my rights. Never waste your time arguing with a principle either.
My son had an inhaler when he was in elementary school. I was told the school’s policy was to keep all inhalers locked in the principal’s office.
I told the principal my policy was to spend every dime I had to make anyone – school district officials, principals, teachers – who harmed one of my children wish they had never been born. That I would sue everyone even peripherally responsible, file liens against their property picket outside their houses, and generally make it my personal hobby to make their lives miserable, because if something happened to my kids the only thing I had left to live for was revenge.
And that I was smart enough to keep it within the legal side of the law. And, oh, by the way, my family (brothers, parents and cousins) felt the same way, and would take over if anything happened to me.
If they wanted to risk that to keep my son away from his medicine, feel free. I’d start by calling the local newspaper to inform them the school was willing to risk killing children with their policies.
He got to keep his inhaler.
Vonvervengarten said: “They keep me happy because they know I am aware of my rights.”
That doesn’t mean some well-meaning idiot isn’t going to lock up your kid’s life saving medication in a cupboard and then go on vacation with the keys in her pocket. If your child doesn’t need medications like that, awesome. But if they do, you are potentially in a world of trouble.
My family’s experience with epi-pens and teachers leads me to believe many of them will let the kid die waiting for an ambulance due to squeamishness and fear of lawsuits/repercussions. Training sessions given annually, every time this allergy kid goes to school in the fall, indicate the average teacher is incapable of being trusted with epi-pens. Maybe they will give it, but maybe they -won’t-.
Because you know, they -lie- when they say “Yes, I understand, I can do this.” Job on the line? You better believe they lie.
So don’t assume just because you get your way with these pusillanimous apparatchiks that your child is being looked after properly. Verify, verify, verify, THREATEN and verify again.
Easier to teach the kid at home.