APS overdose at Wakefield

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tell my students all the time, I do not know what is in your body. If you can’t stay awake in my class, I need you to go nap with the nurse.

That's a really good point. I am an elementary school teacher and once or twice a year I have kids who are just very sleepy in my class. (Usually they admit they stayed up late gaming...) and sometimes, I just let them put their heads down and rest and don't bother them about it. But I will rethink that policy now.

I’m a high school teacher in a neighboring district and have done the same. This has been a huge wake up call. I can never let a tired kid put their head down again during class.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I came late to this thread, did someone at the school administer narcan? I thought that was a pretty reliable antidote to fentanyl overdose. I hope all schools have narcan readily available.

I dont think it has ever been confirmed it was fentanyl (you can OD on reg percocet or opiods or stimulants or cough syrup. But anyway, narcan doesn't always work and obviously needs to be administered timely in order to work at all. We have no idea how long the kid was down.

This is the big problem: we in the school have no idea how long a kid has been affected. They’re being found in the bathroom after being gone a long time and some kid sees them or an adult goes to check. I never let kids sleep in my class for this very reason, but at my school, twice kids have only been discovered to be in severe medical distress (needing narcan and chest compressions) after people assumed they were sleeping and didn’t rouse them. I tell my students all the time, I do not know what is in your body. If you can’t stay awake in my class, I need you to go nap with the nurse. It’s not a game anymore. And yes schools have narcan but I need you to realize we are at an absolute crisis when teachers and school staff now have to be expected to regularly administer life saving narcotic medications to students. Like this is a dystopia. School as you know it is a dead institution; what we are working with is some bizarre ghost ship that claims to be School but functions as a completely different thing now. As a teacher it is honestly impossible to even process what the hell has happened to schools.

Thank you for this post - I never thought of that. I'm sorry that teaching has turned into this for you.

It is terrible for us and the kids. We were given CPR face shields as a staff last week because people might have to administer CPR in their classroom but also be worried about breathing in air from the child they’re giving chest compressions to. And the reason we were told WE might have to administer CPR is this is an event that happens frequently enough that it is very likely we could call to the nurse for an emergency in our room and she is already responding to another emergency in another room and it’s on us. This is why we were also told to get narcan doses to keep in our bags. The kids are so used to seeing ambulances roll up or our school go into a “hold” for a medical emergency that they just go “oh someone OD’d” and don’t believe us even when we say it could be lots of different things that aren’t an OD. The kid is back at school a few days later and the band plays on and on. And oh yeah, we’re supposed to somehow make kids feel safe and able to learn in this environment.

Are you a teacher at Wakefield?

No. I am a teacher at another area high school. We are all dealing with this very same thing though to varying degrees. It’s probably worse at my school than Wakefield but none of these high schools are immune to this, not the wealthiest nor the poorest. The kids do not understand how the game has changed w/r/t popping pills. Their brains developmentally actually can’t process the real risk and how vulnerable they are to one bad pill.

😞 I mean the fact that there was another overdose at Wakefield on Thursday during the intruder situation, when a fellow classmate just died from an overdose in the same school a few days earlier shows this is true. They don’t believe it can happen to them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a pill is laced with fentanyl, I think someone who mistakenly takes it should be considered a victim of poisoning, not ODing.

When someone ODs, they take too much of a drug they intended to take. '

When someone is poisoned, they are given a harmful dose of a drug they had no intention of taking.

+1000

I think it’s referred to as an accidental overdose, but I get what you’re saying. Maybe it would help with the stigma. It really does seem “one pill can kill” needs to be repeated and publicized heavily among youth.

It's not accidental if the kid took a pill on purpose. But kids aren't taking these pills thinking they are fentanyl, are they? Are they just taking them and they get more fentanyl than they intended? I don't think so. So it really isn't an accidental overdose.

They are being poisoned. People are deliberately poisoning kids, teens, others with fentanyl by adding it to other drugs that the kids do intend to take.

If someone was adding grains of fentanyl to, say Starbucks coffee grounds (a legal drug) and a kid bought the coffee, thinking it was coffee, and got some fentanyl and died or was sent to the hospital - would you say he had an accidental overdose? Or that he was poisoned?

I’m not sure the phrasing would make a difference with prosecuting the dealers but if the entire discussion of fentanyl was reframed as an issue of poisoning instead of overdose, I wonder if that would make more kids pay attention or better understand the issue. Overdosing makes it sound like someone took a little too much of something they knew they didn’t have a prescription for and took anyway. The term poisoning brings to mind all of the lessons kids learned when they were little about not drinking chemicals. Everyone knows drinking bleach is bad for you and you’d die if you did it; overdosing on a fake Percocet makes it sound like it was something that just happened by mistake and kids who are “smart” about it will be okay.

[Anonymous]

"We're in the middle of a crisis," said Jarod Forget, Special Agent in Charge of DEA’s Washington Division, which covers the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. "I've met with parents in this area, from D.C. to Maryland and Virginia. I've communicated with these parents, who found their loved ones, their son or their daughter, passed away the next morning, in their bedroom. They went to bed doing their homework, talking to their friends on the phone, playing video games, and the parents didn't think anything of it. Little did they know there was a pill purchased online."

Forget says he's heard stories like that far too often involving counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl.

"I can say in my 20 years in law enforcement, this is the most deadly drug that I've seen," Forget said, referring to fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. According to the DEA, it takes just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, to be a potentially deadly dose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"We're in the middle of a crisis," said Jarod Forget, Special Agent in Charge of DEA’s Washington Division, which covers the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. "I've met with parents in this area, from D.C. to Maryland and Virginia. I've communicated with these parents, who found their loved ones, their son or their daughter, passed away the next morning, in their bedroom. They went to bed doing their homework, talking to their friends on the phone, playing video games, and the parents didn't think anything of it. Little did they know there was a pill purchased online."

Forget says he's heard stories like that far too often involving counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl.

"I can say in my 20 years in law enforcement, this is the most deadly drug that I've seen," Forget said, referring to fentanyl.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. According to the DEA, it takes just two milligrams of fentanyl, the small amount that fits on the tip of a pencil, to be a potentially deadly dose.

^That’s important

[Anonymous]

Why is the PTA president of Wakefield blaming the school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is the PTA president of Wakefield blaming the school?

Yeah I'm confused about that. What exactly should schools be doing? They provide drug ed and have narcan on hand. How do they know this kid didn't take the pill at home or on the walk to school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is the PTA president of Wakefield blaming the school?

Yeah I'm confused about that. What exactly should schools be doing? They provide drug ed and have narcan on hand. How do they know this kid didn't take the pill at home or on the walk to school?

I’m guessing they have blamed the school for failing to enforce security with intruders and outsiders regularly entering the building ..and the amount of bullying and drug use inside the school.

Parents have been demanding answers for a long time prior.

[Anonymous]

I was surprised to see that too. I thought thebWakefield principal was well regarded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised to see that too. I thought thebWakefield principal was well regarded.

They have to blame somebody and as always, it’ll fall on the school because somehow we are supposed to single handedly fix every societal issue that impacts children and families.

[Anonymous]

I guess aps could reassign some of the syphax folks who do nothing to the high schools to help with more community liason...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised to see that too. I thought thebWakefield principal was well regarded.

They have to blame somebody and as always, it’ll fall on the school because somehow we are supposed to single handedly fix every societal issue that impacts children and families.

+1. Schools and teachers can’t do all, and I believe most teachers are truly trying. The loud APS-can’t-do-anything-right complainers are going to cause even more good teachers to leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I came late to this thread, did someone at the school administer narcan? I thought that was a pretty reliable antidote to fentanyl overdose. I hope all schools have narcan readily available.

I dont think it has ever been confirmed it was fentanyl (you can OD on reg percocet or opiods or stimulants or cough syrup. But anyway, narcan doesn't always work and obviously needs to be administered timely in order to work at all. We have no idea how long the kid was down.

This is the big problem: we in the school have no idea how long a kid has been affected. They’re being found in the bathroom after being gone a long time and some kid sees them or an adult goes to check. I never let kids sleep in my class for this very reason, but at my school, twice kids have only been discovered to be in severe medical distress (needing narcan and chest compressions) after people assumed they were sleeping and didn’t rouse them. I tell my students all the time, I do not know what is in your body. If you can’t stay awake in my class, I need you to go nap with the nurse. It’s not a game anymore. And yes schools have narcan but I need you to realize we are at an absolute crisis when teachers and school staff now have to be expected to regularly administer life saving narcotic medications to students. Like this is a dystopia. School as you know it is a dead institution; what we are working with is some bizarre ghost ship that claims to be School but functions as a completely different thing now. As a teacher it is honestly impossible to even process what the hell has happened to schools.

NP. Thank you, PP, for your thoughtful post. My heart breaks for teachers as they try to shore up our sinking institutions. Where do we go from here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess aps could reassign some of the syphax folks who do nothing to the high schools to help with more community liason...

Make them bathroom monitors

[Anonymous]

Seriously. The Wakefield PTA should be supporting its leadership not trashing them at SB meetings. They are going to lose a lot of good administrators and teachers by attacking them for something that is simply not their fault. Bad move.