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'A Peanut In The Classroom Is Like A Loaded Gun'

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By Donna Koehn of The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 28, 2007

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Lisa Hawk patiently tries to corral son Aiden, 5, back to business, drawing clowns from geometric shapes at his home-school worktable.

But there are people in the house — big, big excitement. His bare feet skitter across hardwood floors as he runs room to room, showing off his prized dominoes and Thomas the Tank Engine trains.

Then he throws himself across the front door and pleads with grown-up visitors to stay and play.

His mother knows he gets bored and lonely at home, even though she brings in playmates as often as she can. It breaks her heart to watch the carefree children at her St. Petersburg neighborhood school, knowing Aiden will never join them.

"I would love for him to be able to go to school and play with the other kids," Hawk says. "But for someone with allergies, a peanut in the classroom is like a loaded gun."

No one knows how many parents turn to home-schooling because they think it is the only way to keep their allergic children safe. A small study at the University of Maryland in 2006 found that 10 percent of the children with food allergies surveyed were educated at home for fear of life-threatening anaphylactic reactions at school.

Debbie Hogan, who has a 7-year-old with an egg allergy and leads an online support group for parents, says only a handful of members plan to send their young children to public school. Others have tried and given up due to a lack of understanding and cooperation from school staff fearful of taking on the life-or-death responsibility.

She says that even though she helped create a policy in Hillsborough County public schools that outlines how personnel are to deal with allergic children, it is applied inconsistently from school to school. Additionally, the district rarely informs parents their children are entitled to "reasonable accommodations" under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

"Parents don't have any idea what to ask for," she says.

Nineteen times Aiden has suffered anaphylactic shock caused by exposure to one of the 72 foods to which he is allergic. He also has allergies to Latex and medicines. His system went haywire as a baby after a liver transplant for a rare disease, his mother says.

"People understand the severity of liver transplants, but that's not what makes him unable to go to school," Hawk says. "It's food allergies. I know bad; I've seen my son go Code Blue. He wasn't expected to survive. That's why it makes me crazy that people don't understand how dangerous food allergies can be."

The only time Hawk or close family members were apart from Aiden — for less than an hour at a camp for sick children — a nurse gave him a Tootsie Roll Pop. His parents found him on a swing, dazed, wheezing and turning blue. An epinephrine injection and a trip to the hospital saved his life.

"There is just no way I can send him to school."

A Problem On The Rise

The need for food-free zones and strict enforcement policies at schools likely will grow as more children enter school carrying EpiPens in their lunchboxes. One in 17 children younger than 3 has at least one food allergy, up from one in 25 in the recent past. In the past decade, the number of
Americans with food allergies has doubled to 12 million. The number of people allergic to peanuts, the most egregious offender, has doubled in the past five years.

According to The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, a nonprofit organization based in Fairfax, Va., more than 30,000 trips to emergency rooms for allergies are required each year. In addition, 150 to 200 people die each year from allergies, 70 percent of them teenagers and young adults newly emerged from their parents' safe-diet cocoons.

No one knows why the numbers are rising so quickly, although theories include unidentified food additives, antacids taken during pregnancy, and too many antibiotic products keeping kitchens and bathrooms free of useful germs.

As more children are affected, parents have begun working to increase the public's knowledge and secure their children's rights.

In January 2006, the Kelsey Ryan Act granted Florida schoolchildren the right to have epinephrine pens in classrooms. The act was named for a child, then 9, with a severe peanut allergy. Also last year, the Hillsborough County School District adopted its 58-page policy addressing the problems of allergies in classrooms and prescribing training for employees in how to recognize allergies and administer epinephrine.

St. Petersburg lawyer Mark Kamleiter, who specializes in special education law statewide, says the policy does little more for families than sit on a shelf.

"I've seen schools react really badly, and some are hard for parents to deal with," he says. "Schools have such a habit of using food in the classrooms for rewards and celebrations. They just have to say to parents, 'Don't bring in peanuts.' But they won't. I try to comprehend why this is such a major problem.

"I want to ask, 'What part of protecting the health of our kids don't you understand?'"

How Safe Zones Work

Every day about 11 a.m., second-grader Caroline Hogan joins a friend for lunch in a small room filled with filing cabinets in the office of Citrus Park Elementary in Tampa. The block walls are bare. There's a sign on the door designating the area an allergy-free zone.

"With eggs around, I lose my breath," Caroline explains.

Last year, Debbie Hogan stayed in the cafeteria with her daughter at a table set aside for children with allergies. It was up to her to make sure the table was scrubbed properly between sittings. She also went on field trips and worked with other parents to help them understand that the classroom needs to be free of any food because eggs can hide in many things.

Caroline's classmates understand her situation, says her teacher, Elaine Cook. In a recent writing exercise, about one-third of the kids said the most important school rule was keeping Caroline safe by washing their hands.

Now that the classroom is food-free, students no longer expect candy rewards for good behavior.

"To be quite honest, I was glad to let that go," Cook says. "I haven't heard a single complaint from a parent."

This year, Hogan needed to return to work. So she sat down with school officials to establish the allergy-free lunchroom for two. To make sure she felt safe leaving Caroline, she also requested a 504 plan, an option available to parents of allergic children and others with disabilities that sets out a school's responsibilities to make reasonable accommodations. If the plan is violated, federal funding can be withheld.

Hogan says parents remain ignorant of the option because no one with the school district tells them about it.

"I want a packet of information available to any parent who walks into a school with a child with an EpiPen, telling them everything they are entitled to," she says.

Marsha Alcorn, the district's 504 coordinator, says most parents with allergic children don't need the 504 plan.

"We do a health care plan in the schools with the school nurse," she says. "I think the parents feel there is more teeth [in the 504], but they should be getting all they need already."

Lawyer Kamleiter isn't convinced.

"If that's true, why do parents keep coming to me for help?" he asks.

Further heightening parents' concerns is a cutback in the number of school nurses, many of whom asked Superintendent MaryEllen Elia for help at the beginning of the school year. Elia, who blames a tight budget for a hiring freeze and calls the concerns overblown, maintains that all schools are adequately staffed by nursing assistants. She did agree to form a workgroup this month to study the issue.

"I can't imagine how an unlicensed health assistant could be responsible for taking care of children with allergies," says Hogan, a registered nurse.

'We Fought Tooth And Nail'

Chris Bates was pleased when the principal of the Rampello Downtown Partnership School asked his wife, Polly, a reading specialist, to join the staff. That meant their daughter, Holly, with a severe peanut allergy, could attend school there safely.

Several incidents had scared them.

"My wife walked into the cafeteria when the principal was giving out peanut butter cups," he says. "We pressed for a peanut-free environment, and they said no.

"Then, we had a fight about the EpiPen in the classroom. One time my wife saw our daughter, a preschooler, sitting in the office, holding her own EpiPen. Her teacher was great, but if the teacher wasn't there, we had problems."

Bates found out about the 504 plan and requested a meeting.

"A big table, a bunch of dark suits and ties, and there I was in my jeans," says Bates, who manages a wildlife removal business. "I think they try to intimidate parents.

"We were getting so much resistance, we started to worry about what kind of position it was placing our daughter in."

After other incidents, a change in schools and promises from Elia that the problems could be resolved, the Bateses remained frustrated. They decided to home-school Holly, now 6, and Polly Bates quit her job.

"They were so afraid we were going to sue them," he says. "I don't want people to think we're lunatic parents. We are educated parents, and we know our daughter's rights. We fought the fight. We fought tooth and nail."

He says Holly's online school initiated a 504 plan, and its teachers have gone out of their way to send her only new books and supplies to limit her exposure to potential allergens.

"What I went through — I just want to make sure other parents don't have to do that."

Another Option

Chas Bronstein, 12, dashes to lunch with his friends, chows down on plain tortillas and some other stuff, then joins his pals afterward to toss a ball around. If one of them has a peanut butter sandwich, he usually can smell it and steers clear.

Once, when Chas was younger, an allergy doctor tested him with a piece of peanut a little bigger than the head of a pin. He immediately had a serious reaction. The doctor later said that if Chas had eaten a whole peanut, he might not have been able to save the boy.

Chas deals.

Chas' school, Shorecrest Preparatory in St. Petersburg, is not allergen-free. The blond boy with a wry wit also is allergic to milk, eggs, tree nuts and Latex.

"Normally, parents are pretty paranoid about this," he says. "Sometimes it's better to keep kids at school."

His mother, Kay, is not so cavalier. However, she and her husband made a decision to help Chas lead as normal a life as possible.

"I didn't want to turn him into a bubble boy," she says. "I was afraid in an allergen-free school we would develop a false sense of security."

That doesn't mean she hasn't worked to create an environment that accommodates her son. She enrolled him in preschool at Shorecrest because of the small number of children per classroom and its openness to parent involvement. The school goes through 12th grade, and most of the student body grows up together.

"The kids have been very understanding," Bronstein says. "He's only been teased a couple of times."

A regular on campus, she served for years as the "food liaison," helping parents learn not just about allergies but also about diabetes, religious practices and vegetarianism.

"On special days, I make sure there are Popsicles in the freezer," she says.

Bronstein knows many parents would be too frightened to allow their child in such an environment. It helps that Chas is mature and knows when he's feeling an allergic reaction coming on.
"I tell everyone — if he says he's in trouble, he's in trouble."

The office keeps a bag filled with Chas' allergy paraphernalia, just in case. The number of EpiPens in the clinic has jumped from a couple to 20 in the past few years, the school nurse says.

Bronstein becomes angry when she sees movies or news reports that ridicule those with food allergies.
"It's unconscionable," she says. "This is serious. There is such a lack of understanding."

Lisa Hawk, Aiden's mom, hopes her son's allergies will diminish or a vaccine will be developed to help him. Researchers say they may have answers in 10 to 15 years, but for now, the only way to control allergies is to avoid the offending foods.

"I want him to have a better quality of life," Hawk says. "I worry what he'll do for a wedding cake. For now, it's no circus, no Halloween candy, no restaurants, no birthday cakes, no Easter chocolates.

"People think it's some sniffles or something. To them, peanut butter crackers are no big deal. For my son, they could mean his life."

Researcher Michael Messano contributed to this report. Reporter Donna Koehn can be reached at (813) 259-8264 or dkoehn@tampatrib.com.

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