Way Behind the Times

Elizabeth Gardner wrote:

Elizabeth Gardner writes:
By the time they get out of high school, kids should know how to
navigate the aisles of the local pharmacy and find what they need.
Making them trek down to the nurse for every Tylenol is
counterproductive, without making them any safer. At least, I'd sure
like to see proof that it makes them safer. It seems more like a CYA
for the school than a legitimate safety concern.
snip to avoid too much quoted material
The concerns may be legitimate, but bureaucrats the world over often
fail to recognize that certain rules--especially those that absolutely
prohibit this or that--can create problems of their own. "Zero
tolerance" may look easy to enforce, but when a kid can't bring a butter
knife to school for her cream cheese (but can bring an equally or more
dangerous fork), or carry tylenol for a headache, the school
administrators look like idiots, and deservedly so. Not sure which

I don't know that there's as much difference between a plastic knife
and a plastic fork as there is a difference between a metal knife and
a metal fork. I was assuming that it was metal that the child
couldn't have.

legal medications would pose a risk to other students, but surely
they're a small minority of what kids could possibly bring, and could be
flagged in whatever rulebook now contains the "no drugs of any kind"
stricture.

Actually they took aspirin out of our medicine cabinet at work because
they didn't want to be prescribing 'drugs' when it wasn't under a
doc's supervision. Or maybe they were concerned that someone would
adulterate what was in the bottle or substitute something else. I
don't remember. It was a silly bureaucratic reason though.

They didn't keep us from carrying our own.

IMHO the real danger with the kid bringing some medication to school
is because they may put another kind of drug into a OTC container, or
they may bring prescription medication that belongs to someone else in
the family, or is an old outdated prescription. Giving someone
another person's prescription can cause harm and I don't see any way
around that except by prohibiting everything.

grandma Rosalie

Elizabeth Gardner writes:
Not sure which legal medications would pose a risk to other students,
but surely they're a small minority of what kids could possibly bring,
and could be flagged in whatever rulebook now contains the "no drugs
of any kind" stricture.

Well, as I said, teachers and administrators don't want the
responsibility for inspecting different little pills and vials and
trying to discern what they contain. I don't blame them, either.

David desJardins

In ,
David desJardins wrote:

*Elizabeth Gardner writes:
* Not sure which legal medications would pose a risk to other students,
* but surely they're a small minority of what kids could possibly bring,
* and could be flagged in whatever rulebook now contains the "no drugs
* of any kind" stricture.
*
*Well, as I said, teachers and administrators don't want the
*responsibility for inspecting different little pills and vials and
*trying to discern what they contain. I don't blame them, either.

so, why can't a kid bring a brand new, hermetically sealed bottle of
aspirin or ibuprofen or whatever the OTC thing is that they need on the
first day, give it to the nurse to keep in her office, and get it as
needed?

--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

David desJardins wrote in :

Elizabeth Gardner writes:
Not sure which legal medications would pose a risk to other students,
but surely they're a small minority of what kids could possibly bring,
and could be flagged in whatever rulebook now contains the "no drugs
of any kind" stricture.

Well, as I said, teachers and administrators don't want the
responsibility for inspecting different little pills and vials and
trying to discern what they contain. I don't blame them, either.

If it is an OTC drug they are probably available in "bubble" packs, where
you have to snap one out to take it. It would be hard to duplicate one
of those to take other drugs. In fact it would be extremely clear if it
had been adulterated.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Hillary Israeli writes:
so, why can't a kid bring a brand new, hermetically sealed bottle of
aspirin or ibuprofen or whatever the OTC thing is that they need on the
first day, give it to the nurse to keep in her office, and get it as
needed?

I think that's just what most schools do (along with a note from the
parent). The original complaint was about just this: the inconvenience
of making students "trek down to the nurse for every Tylenol" (Elizabeth
Gardner).

David desJardins

David desJardins wrote:
Hillary Israeli writes:

so, why can't a kid bring a brand new, hermetically sealed bottle of
aspirin or ibuprofen or whatever the OTC thing is that they need on the
first day, give it to the nurse to keep in her office, and get it as
needed?


I think that's just what most schools do (along with a note from the
parent). The original complaint was about just this: the inconvenience
of making students "trek down to the nurse for every Tylenol" (Elizabeth
Gardner).

I went to a rather large high school, and of course
the nurse's office was not at all centrally located.
I would rather have a student be able to take pain
relief as needed -- someone who is 14-18 certainly
should know how to do that -- rather than having them
trudge the halls to a nurse's office just so a
non-thinking bureaucrat can have checked off the
[ ] Made Schools Safer for Children Today
box.

This drugs-only-in-the-nurses-office mindset strikes
me as something that a bureaucrat in a school with
a drug problem thought up.

Scott DD 10 and DS 7

(Hillary Israeli) wrote:

In ,
David desJardins wrote:

*Elizabeth Gardner writes:
* Not sure which legal medications would pose a risk to other students,
* but surely they're a small minority of what kids could possibly bring,
* and could be flagged in whatever rulebook now contains the "no drugs
* of any kind" stricture.
*
*Well, as I said, teachers and administrators don't want the
*responsibility for inspecting different little pills and vials and
*trying to discern what they contain. I don't blame them, either.

so, why can't a kid bring a brand new, hermetically sealed bottle of
aspirin or ibuprofen or whatever the OTC thing is that they need on the
first day, give it to the nurse to keep in her office, and get it as
needed?

Because at our schools there aren't nurses any more. Plus you have
how many students in the school? And how many OTC packages would that
be?

And the school secretaries don't want to give out medication unless
they have a prescription to back them up. Also, you don't always KNOW
on the first day what you are going to need. DD#1 had a brief episode
with migraines in the 4th grade and then never had the problem again.




grandma Rosalie

x-no-archive:yes
Scott Lindstrom wrote:


I went to a rather large high school, and of course
the nurse's office was not at all centrally located.
I would rather have a student be able to take pain
relief as needed -- someone who is 14-18 certainly
should know how to do that -- rather than having them
trudge the halls to a nurse's office just so a
non-thinking bureaucrat can have checked off the
[ ] Made Schools Safer for Children Today
box.

This drugs-only-in-the-nurses-office mindset strikes
me as something that a bureaucrat in a school with
a drug problem thought up.

High Schools are exactly where there ARE drug problems.

Plus we also don't have nurses and nurses offices anymore. When I was
teaching 20 years ago, we didn't have nurses. When I was substitute
teaching 45 years ago, we didn't have a nurse or a nurse's office.
The coaches or the vice principal took care of the boys' injuries -
the female guidance counselor did the girls.

I did have a school nurse when I went to HS. I went to her twice.
Once when I almost cut my thumb off with a linoleum knife in art, and
her response was "Don't drip blood on my clean floor". And once when
my mom sent me to school with measles and she let me walk home (I only
lived a block from the school).

When you say 'give it to the school nurse', IME in elementary or
middle school that means the secretary in the principal's office. And
she often doesn't want to deal with that especially for OTC non-life
threatening stuff - it's not really in her job description.

And in HS it's usually the guidance counselors.

grandma Rosalie

In article ,
David desJardins wrote:

Hillary Israeli writes:
so, why can't a kid bring a brand new, hermetically sealed bottle of
aspirin or ibuprofen or whatever the OTC thing is that they need on the
first day, give it to the nurse to keep in her office, and get it as
needed?

I think that's just what most schools do (along with a note from the
parent). The original complaint was about just this: the inconvenience
of making students "trek down to the nurse for every Tylenol" (Elizabeth
Gardner).

David desJardins


But first you have to pay for an appointment to see the doctor who has
to write a perscription -- and it has to be a new perscription every
year. I REALLY don't understand why a parent signature isn't good
enough on OTC drugs!

The inconvenience can be more than just annoying in large schools; my
daughter had to choose between asking to leave a class or being late,
because the one nurse was always swamped between classes. And if the
nurse was tied up or away from her desk it might take half an hour or
more, leaving my daughter to miss most of a class just to take a pill,
and also leaving her in pain longer than would happen if she had been
allowed to have them on her person.

meh
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

"Penny Gaines" wrote in message
...

If it is an OTC drug they are probably available in "bubble" packs, where
you have to snap one out to take it. It would be hard to duplicate one
of those to take other drugs. In fact it would be extremely clear if it
had been adulterated.


Perhaps they package OTC meds differently in the UK than in the US. I have
seen many OTC meds in the US that are simply in a bottle. That would include
any types of ibuprofen, aspirin, Tylenol/acetaminophen that I have seen. I
have, otoh, seen most decongestants/antihistamines in those bubble packs,
but once you separate one bubble pack from the original box containing the
whole thing it becomes very difficult for someone to identify what it is,
other than that it is bubble packaged. Either way, the question remains,
should children of any age in any school be allowed to have items on them
which *some* children might abuse? The current no-tolerance rules appear to
be in reaction to situations where it became very difficult to make
reasonable judgments without enough information, so
no-thinking-just-enforce-them rules became de rigueur. I don't agree with
it, but I don't have a good solution to offer either. And, I am reminded of
someone I knew in high school who would take 25-40 aspirins a day when she
was unable to get speed pills. Apparently they had a somewhat similar
effect. Ofcourse they also had a negative effect on her health.

-Aula