Harding Middle School

The middle school which my sister goes to had Hazmat come in today. Some kids apparently let some gas or something being released into the air to an extent that had eight kids hospitalized and many more reporting to be very ill. My sister explicitly said she felt “dizzy with a headache and nasty feelings”. Kids were throwing up left and right. The media was reporting it as soon as the firefighter squad was called. However, parents weren’t notified until after 3 o’clock as to assure they can’t call their child out of school. The only precaution the school went through was to not let the kids go onto the first floor unless they were exiting the building. The smell started in the cafeteria and slowly permeated throughout the school. My sister happily reported that the school will not be open tomorrow, so she gets a skip day.

The problem here is that the media got to find out about a potentially lethal situation at a middle school full of children before the parents and guardians. Parents have the right to know about their children’s surroundings and if those surroundings happen to change, they have the right to know that as well. There is always debate about how much the school should be involved in the child’s life choices. Should they get much input and be able to decide whether a child should be in contact with potentially deathly chemicals?  Or should they be required to contact parents the second anything out of the ordinary happens?

This could be very difficult on the schools, which would have to decide where to draw the line on contact with parents over children’s lives. I mean, do you call every time their kid gets a baby headache at school? Maybe not. With sickness though, it should be the parent’s decision on how to deal with the child. The parents are the ones who must take care of the child at home, take of days of work to nurse their offspring back to health. The school only has a control over the child when he should be in school. The parent is the one who gets the child on the weekends and breaks and evenings.

No matter what the final decision is for how much contact the school should have with parents, when kids are being hospitalized, the parent has the right to know first. Harding, you slipped up this time.

Sincerely Sydney