Son has a peanut allergy, school continues to give him or allow him to get peanuts. : legaladvice

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This has been an ongoing issue since the second day of school, where he was given peanut butter crackers. We sort of brushed it off as a new school year, new students, teachers a bit frazzled dealing with first graders no real big deal. His allergy isn't really severe but still not fun to deal with and can potentially become life threatening.

We had already informed the school of his allergy before the year started and even talked directly to the teacher about it because the default snack during the day if no other parents brought in a snack in peanut butter crackers. We even offered to purchase a special alternative for him, but they said it was unnecessary as they have other alternatives.

So we figured the issue was over when a few weeks later it happened again, this time they claimed he grabbed another students snack and ran off to eat it before they could stop him. Now my little one can be a little bit of a hard head and I can potentially see this happening so again we talked to him about peanuts and how dangerous they are to him. He continued to adamantly deny doing that and said Mrs gave them to him.

We then decide a meeting with the principal is in order, not to blame the teacher or accuse her of lying but to hopefully get this under control. Again a few weeks of no more issues, then it happened again.

Once again the story is "he grabbed it and ran off and ate the whole package before we caught him". Okay so a 6 year old managed to grab an unopened package of crackers, elude a teacher and an aide and eat the whole package before he's caught? He's crying and swearing to us he was given them, and after so many incidents we have to start believing him.

Another meeting with the principal and teacher gets us a "Do not worry! This won't happen again". We have another long sit down with our son to explain that even if it's given to you, ask to make sure it doesn't have peanuts or other nuts in it.

Then, the very next school day (the meeting was on Friday) he's given another snack of peanut butter crackers but this time he asks if there is nuts in it and then he's given the alternative. We figure it kind of sucks that the kid has to be the adult right here but at the end of the day he's learning to ask about nuts. We send an email to the principal detailing the issue and say that the next stop is the school board if he is given peanuts again. We get a response back "if he's asking now what's the problem? He should have known to ask to begin with. We are teachers not parents."

We have no issues for a while until this week. Some parent brought in PB&J sandwiches for snack time and he was given one. He forgot to ask about nuts but thought "it was only in the crackers". We find out the parent was aware of a nut allergy in the class (it's on the parent snack sheet) and brought in just a jelly one that was made separate from the peanut butter one's. He was not given this one. We spent a day at the hospital.

We've had endless talks with him about nuts and do our best to teach him but some of the blame has to be on the teachers here right? Do schools not have an obligation to deal with allergies? The school lunch seems to have zero issues with this and has never given him a nut when there are several things on the menu rotation that contain them. He gets a special tray that was no where near any nuts. This is in Indiana, any help is appreciated.

Chaplain_Picard on November 15th, 2018 at 11:51 UTC »

We went through a similar situation with my peanut allergy having younger brother, years ago. He was on a 504 plan and somebody violated it, putting him into anaphylaxis. I remember waiting in some office about three days later while my dad and his lawyer had a meeting with the school board, superintendent, and district lawyers. I don't know what came of it. I never got any details. But I imagine it wasn't good for the school.

kali_is_my_copilot on November 15th, 2018 at 11:12 UTC »

"We're teachers not parents" what the everlasting actual fuck.

Feyranna on November 15th, 2018 at 10:46 UTC »

This one made me so angry. I got even more angry that the person suggesting they pull the child til this is resolved got downvotes, depends a lot on how difficult that is in their state but in mine if it was my child he’d be out of there yesterday. They already hospitalized the boy how much longer do you wait to say “no you can’t watch my child til you have a better plan in place to not fucking kill him!”

Id have gone scorched earth after the second incident.