no Peanut Butter for lunch in school

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
My kid can’t bring a gun to school 'cause it can kill people. If he wants to put holes in soda cans at recess, he has to find another way to do it.

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Whoa. Seriously false analogy. There is no way the fatality of guns and the fatality of peanut butter are even close to being comparable.

I’m torn on the issue. Depriving kids of peanut butter is not a big deal, I suppose, but it’s the principle of the thing that bothers me. Why should all students have to accomodate a select few? If a kid is hypersensitive to sunlight, for example, the parents would probably have to arrange for homeschooling or some other alternative - they wouldn’t demand the school wall up all their windows.

Then again, it IS only peanut butter. Kids can go drown themselves in peanut butter when they get home, I suppose.

It is curious how this has sprung up in recent times. I’ve never even heard of peanut butter bands until this thread.

62

[QUOTE=villa]
So what percentage needs to be affected before something ceases to be a “right?”

I never said you would not be affected. But please, don’t invent some ridiculous “right” and claim it is being violated. Schools restrict the access of multiple individuals and products to the premises, whether those products are legal for society at large or not.
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My emphasis that I would be affected wasn’t directed at you but at the board in general, since I’m reading “because your kid…” I don’t have a kid. Sorry to have misplaced the emphasis toward you.

I think you and I will have to agree to disagree about rights, at least for the time being. If I think of a different way to express my position, I’ll post it.

63

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
Whoa. Seriously false analogy. There is no way the fatality of guns and the fatality of peanut butter are even close to being comparable.
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“The fatality” of both ends up with a kid dead. The deadness is exactly comparable. I know what you’re saying, that more kids are vulnerable to deadness from guns than from peanut butter, but that’s a matter of degree of range, not degree of fatality. Of course I chose a relatively non-brainer for the example. Nearly everyone agrees guns at school are bad because they put kids at risk of dying. We’re now learning that, for some kids, so does peanut butter.

So…how many kids is enough? If a dozen kids have allergies, is that enough? How 'bout 10? How many kids, exactly, do you want to prevent your kid’s lunch from killing before it’s worth it? I’ve decided that number is approximately one.

Well, they could, according to the ADA, but it would be unlikely, I’d think. But the kid’s IEP could stipulate that a nurse needs to make sure he applies sunscreen and the teacher ensure he’s got on long sleeves and long pants and a hat before going outside.

No one knows why peanut allergies have risen so dramatically over the last generation. The “too clean” hypothesis is one idea.

64

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Well, they could, according to the ADA, but it would be unlikely, I’d think. But the kid’s IEP could stipulate that a nurse needs to make sure he applies sunscreen and the teacher ensure he’s got on long sleeves and long pants and a hat before going outside.
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They could demand it, but there is no way that would be considered as reasonable accomodation under the ADA. Just like I could demand a rib eye for lunch every Thursday under some odd interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, but it doesn’t mean I am going to get one.

65

[QUOTE=villa]
They could demand it, but there is no way that would be considered as reasonable accomodation under the ADA. Just like I could demand a rib eye for lunch every Thursday under some odd interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause, but it doesn’t mean I am going to get one.
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Which one, the window darkening or the IEP accommodations I mentioned? The IEP ones are absolutely reasonable and enforceable - there was a kid in my mother’s grade school with those exact accommodations. They also installed blinds in his homeroom, which the teacher kept closed during the day. IEP considers “least restrictive learning environment” in addition to reasonable accommodations - the changes at school were less restrictive (and far less expensive) than the school sending a tutor to his home daily.

I don’t know if the IEP regulations are the same as the ADA ones or not, and I don’t know ADA well enough to comment on whether it would consider shades in the windows a “reasonable accommodation” or not. It seems as reasonable to me as an elevator and, again, cheaper.

66

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Which one, the window darkening or the IEP accommodations I mentioned? The IEP ones are absolutely reasonable and enforceable - there was a kid in my mother’s grade school with those exact accommodations.
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The school having to “wall up all their windows.” Blinds - I don’t know the way that would turn out. I mentioned earlier I don’t know the ADA very well at all. To be honest, I don’t even know if it covers allergies - I assume it would, but I don’t know.

67

[QUOTE=BwanaBob]
If my kid were this sensitive to peanuts he’d be home schooled - case closed.
It’s the only environment I have complete control over.

No one has the right to demand the public schools make such accommodations.

Hypothetically, what happens if a kid is presented to a school who is allergic to beef proteins? So we ban beef in school? This could be endless.
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Point 1: Yes, I’d probably home school mine as well. Wait, I couldn’t because then I couldn’t work. For some, though, it might be an option.

Point 2: In a way, they probably do have the right because they pay taxes and all kids are entitled to an education (and required to get one).

I have a niece who’s about the right age to be in my class. However, she never will be because she’s autistic. Her case is severe and the county has a special school for students like her. I think the reasoning goes like this:

  1. Her needs are special, far beyond what special education services are offered at any local public high school.

  2. By concentrating resources in said special school, the state can better serve her educational needs.

So while parents do have a right to a public education for their child, in which school is not necessarily the same for all.

If the PB kid were my own child, I’d be nervous as hell. Even if I could homeschool, the child has socialization needs that homeschooling can’t accomodate. Send them to school and one mistake…even an adult could have a lapse, but kids that age, whoa! One kid has a buck in his pocket and stops to buy some peanut m&m’s as a snack on the way to school, and not thinking, goes to talk to the allergic kid.

Imagine, in a momentary lapse, being the child who kills a classmate like that. How many years would it take for a child to get over that guilt?

If these severe allergies continue to grow in number, maybe they’ll start building separate schools for them like my niece goes to. No latex, no peanuts, etc., a school specializing in eliminating allergens.

68

Y’know, color me insensitive, but if people are going to drop dead because they get a microscopic dose of some peanut-related material somewhere on their body… they got problems much bigger than school. Off-school, what are these people going to do? Do they demand that all latex, nut-containting or nut-related or may-have-been-exposed-to-nuts-somewhere, or peanut-related stuff all be removed whereever they go? :confused:

69

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]
I’ve never even heard of peanut butter bands until this thread.
[/QUOTE]

Well, there’s this one.

70

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Y’know, color me insensitive, but if people are going to drop dead because they get a microscopic dose of some peanut-related material somewhere on their body… they got problems much bigger than school. Off-school, what are these people going to do? Do they demand that all latex, nut-containting or nut-related or may-have-been-exposed-to-nuts-somewhere, or peanut-related stuff all be removed whereever they go? :confused:
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Again, most of these demands are not directly from the kid (who would most likely just like everyone to shut the hell up about it 'cause it’s embarrassing) or the parent (who may indeed be munching on peanut butter Twix at home but keeping it away from the kid), but from the school, which, to protect its own ass(ets), is going to take the most conservative approach possible, assuming that all kids with peanut allergies will die from looking at a .jpeg of the Planters Peanut. They won’t. But the school had to plan for the worst-case scenario.

71

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Y’know, color me insensitive, but if people are going to drop dead because they get a microscopic dose of some peanut-related material somewhere on their body… they got problems much bigger than school. Off-school, what are these people going to do? Do they demand that all latex, nut-containting or nut-related or may-have-been-exposed-to-nuts-somewhere, or peanut-related stuff all be removed whereever they go? :confused:
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I think the level of exposure here might be throwing some people off. I can really only speak to personal experience but I do know that in the case of one of my campers with a latex allergy, he was fine in a baseball stadium where people had balloons and whatever else. He did, however, go into anaphylactic shock when one of the other campers on the school bus opened a latex toy in his section of the bus. I could not guess if the same would have happened had the toy been all the way in the front.

I was just assuming that the peanut allergy was similar. Someone eating peanuts at a football game is not going to kill you. Someone eating peanut butter in the lunchroom and leaving some on the table/chair before you get there might be a different problem.

72

[QUOTE=Frosted Glass]
I think the level of exposure here might be throwing some people off.

[snip]

I was just assuming that the peanut allergy was similar. Someone eating peanuts at a football game is not going to kill you. Someone eating peanut butter in the lunchroom and leaving some on the table/chair before you get there might be a different problem.
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:eek: Please tell me this allergy dimishes with age. There’s no way these people will survive like that in the long run!

73

>If school officials simply phrase it as a a request, explaining the situation to parents, I bet a vast majority would CHOOSE to do it voluntarily. I have no problem with that.

Perhaps the parents of an allergic child would, though - the idea that only a small minority of the students will be threatening their child’s life doesn’t sound like much of a solution to the problem.

If the ratio of PB-allergic kids to non-PB-allergic kids is 1:1000, and you try to balance things between the two interests, wouldn’t you have to believe that going without peanut butter is at least 1/1000 as big a problem as killing a child, before you could use that as the reason not to accomodate those allergic children with a total ban? Seems unreasonable.

74

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
:eek: Please tell me this allergy dimishes with age. There’s no way these people will survive like that in the long run!
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I sure hope so. I never knew how much stuff had latex in it until I worked at daycamp. It really seemed like everyone of those cheap little arcade prizes has latex.

Napier, the only letters that I have seen announcing the ban on latex/peanuts are actually phrased in the form of a request. The district writes letters to the parents explaining the situation and severity of the student(s) allergy. The letter goes on to request that the products are no longer sent to school/camp with their child. No threats, no demands.

75

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
:eek: Please tell me this allergy dimishes with age. There’s no way these people will survive like that in the long run!
[/QUOTE]

…and that’s the other theory - that in the past, people like this died of “unknown causes” before their allergies were known about. :frowning:

76

[QUOTE=Biffy the Elephant Shrew]

[QUOTE=HazelNutCoffee]

I’ve never even heard of peanut butter bands until this thread.
[/quote]
Well, there’s this one.
[/quote]

I heard they got in some kind of a dust-up with this band.

77

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
:eek: Please tell me this allergy dimishes with age. There’s no way these people will survive like that in the long run!
[/QUOTE]

My allergist told me (and my SiL says my nephew’s doctor told her the same) that food allergies do not diminish with age. Also, desensitization is not an option, because even tiny amounts of the allergen provoke the full response. Usually, peanut and nut allergies get worse with each exposure.

HOWEVER. Children can “grow out” of peanut and nut allergies. I discovered my nut allergy in my 30s (allergist said I’d probably been getting progressively worse reactions throughout my life, until I noticed them). My nephew, though, is supposed to be re-checked when he’s ~10 (I think). I don’t know what the likelihood of “growing out” of a food allergy is, though. (hmm. wiki says 20% for peanuts, 9% for nuts. and they then have to maintain frequent exposure!)

78

[QUOTE=SmellMyWort]
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that most schools offer hot lunch for students. Poor students get this for free or at a reduced price. When I was in school I’d say about 90% of the students ate hot lunch and only 10% brought their own.
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In ES I qualified for Federally-funded lunch, and I could never understand why anyone would want to eat a sandwich of peanut butter and jelly. But now, upon adult reflection, it seems that the primary reason for the existence of peanut butter is the popularity of these sandwiches. Surely there is a way to allow for peanut butter in the school while still protecting students with allergies.

But you have to understand the mindset of a school administrator. I’ve said this before: If you want to see a school principal fly through the roof, just walk up behind him or her and whisper, “lawsuit.” Avoiding one is probably 85% of his or her job.

79

I grew up with severe allergies. I was on shots for 13 years, between the ages of 3 and 16. Luckily i’ve outgrown them for the most part, with help from the shots no doubt. That said, If your child has an allergy so severe, that the breath from another, being in the same room as, or just touching the allergen will provoke a fatal reaction; THEN YOU NEED TO HOME-SCHOOL.

It isn’t about rights, it’s about common sense. You are placing a burden upon not only the administration, but the students as well. It’s not the burden of restriction, but responsibility. 8 year olds should NOT have to worry about checking every snack they eat because of a single classmate whom they may not even interact with. If your hyper-allergic kid dies because Johnny has peanut breath, you’ll scar that kid for life. It isn’t fair to your child, or the others. Your kid has a serious medical condition that needs addressing for them to lead a normal life in the real world. Restricting everyone else and expecting them to remember the plethora of things that you had to learn to accommodate your very unique child’s needs is selfish.

YOU have to make the adjustments. That means you might have to find a new job where you can work from home. YOU might have to move. YOU might have to high thee to the university to learn about new treatments. YOU will have to take the initiative to ensure your child’s social development until you can get the issue under control. It can be controlled for most. I don’t believe for one red second that the mere presence of a peanut is enough to kill all these suddenly allergic kids. If you DO have a kid like that, then it’s on YOU, not the rest of us.

80

[QUOTE=Napier]
>No one has the right to demand the public schools make such accommodations.

I think the ADA requires facilities to make “reasonable accomodations”, and everyone has the right to demand schools obey the ADA. There would have to be a judgement that eliminating peanuts from the school was a “reasonable accomodation”, but since so many schools are doing this and still functioning, I’d bet the judgement would be (or has been) that eliminating peanuts IS reasonable.
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As far as I understand, allergies are not a disability, and the ADA covers accommodations for disabilities only.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Sure, but is the mother going to sue herself if her kid dies after she kisses him with peanut butter on her breath? The school has to take the most restrictive stance possible, because when the kids parent’s aren’t there, the school is responsible for them. When I’m watching someone else’s kid, I err on the conservative side, where with my own kids I might let them get away with more. I know I won’t sue myself if my kid falls out of a tree and breaks her arm. I can never be sure with someone else’s kid.
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The case you’re referencing with this ended up being a girl dying of an asthma attack after smoking pot, NOT a kid who died of a peanut butter allergy. Yes, some kids are severely allergic to the point where any nanomolecules of peanut are going to send them into anaphylactic shock; people with other conditions this severe are generally homeschooled so that they don’t put an undue burden on other people for their increasingly large accommodations. It’s a nice thought to be so accommodating to other people, but allergies are not under ADA’s jurisdiction and hysteria about allergies when very few people actually have allergies that severe is a ridiculous measure. If I had issues with vasomotor rhinitis as a child that were strong enough for it to be accurately diagnosed back then, I am absolutely sure that they wouldn’t have banned bleach and perfumes from the school just for me, and I have had severe reactions in the past to both cleaning products and perfumes because of my condition. In fact, that’s how I ended up being diagnosed. I don’t expect anyone to make accommodations for me beyond not deliberately leaving a scent trail or overusing cleaning products when possible, but I generally just try to avoid people who do the following rather than actually request those accommodations. It’s my responsibility as an individual to make sure that I don’t have a reaction, not everyone else’s.

I don’t recall allergies being so prevalent or severe when I was a kid. Then again, in high school conversations with friends and teammates, we got sick more as kids, didn’t use antibacterial stuff as much, and there was a relatively high prevalence of having “butt worms” (Pinworms?) that were caught from the sandbox as toddlers.