APS overdose at Wakefield

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

I’ll never stop being amused by parents who think “bathroom monitor” is a thing.

It’s a stupid idea. The “monitors” wouldn’t be in the stalls with kids anyway.

[Anonymous]

^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

I’m the same teacher PP. You cannot give children access to Narcan to use however they’ll use it. I’m also asking you to again consider that your “solution” is to essentially bring back DARE class (which doesn’t work) , rely on kids to snitch (they don’t), and make them responsible for administering a narcotic blocker to their own classmates. At school. You want kids being taught how to administer Narcan to their peers as part of their responsibility as a student. Please objectively look at how this is not only insane but morally reprehensible. The adults have Narcan and training. The adults do these things. This is NOT what we should just be foisting on teenagers as a matter of routine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I would love to hear from you and other teachers on this thread:

1) what would you like to see the schools do to combat this problem.
2) do you think there have been changes in schools over the past few years - the kind of rules of engagement, if you will - that have helped to foster an environment that has allowed for it to get to this crisis point? For example, how kids are or aren’t disciplined at school. My daughters have talked about how no one is ever really suspended at the MS/HS in FCPS. And I want to say that I realize that the schools aren’t at fault here, but I do think this is an important part of the conversation

I’m a teacher and a parent of a high school student.

1) I have no idea. I talk to my kid about this all of the time. It’s around in the schools far more than I even realized by the stories he tells me. I’m very worried for our kids. I’m a teacher and with them every day and really don’t see how people think schools can prevent this. The best idea I saw was on this thread, never let them sleep in class because we can’t know if it’s being tired or drugs anymore.

2) The risk of suspension will not stop drug use. My own schools were filled with kids doing drugs in the 80s and early 90s. Students still get suspended in my school if they are caught with drugs. These laced pills are completely different now though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

They can give it to every student and I would assume some students would throw it away and yes it would expire so yeah put it in the hallways and put it in the bathrooms

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

They can give it to every student and I would assume some students would throw it away and yes it would expire so yeah put it in the hallways and put it in the bathrooms

The fact that multiple people think this is a good idea is proof of our country is the hellscape they’re using drugs to escape from. Depressing as hell. Let me know it works the first time a teenage CHILD freezes and doesn’t get or forgets how to use the Narcan, or it isn’t there, or they panic and do it wrong or the kid is too far gone and dies anyway. Now a teenagers gets to feel like it’s their fault a peer died. None of this is ok. This is SCHOOL, not Kensington Rd in Philadelphia, god

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

I’m the same teacher PP. You cannot give children access to Narcan to use however they’ll use it. I’m also asking you to again consider that your “solution” is to essentially bring back DARE class (which doesn’t work) , rely on kids to snitch (they don’t), and make them responsible for administering a narcotic blocker to their own classmates. At school. You want kids being taught how to administer Narcan to their peers as part of their responsibility as a student. Please objectively look at how this is not only insane but morally reprehensible. The adults have Narcan and training. The adults do these things. This is NOT what we should just be foisting on teenagers as a matter of routine.

I was responding to the 9:06 poster (I am 9:08). I do not agree to giving narcan to every student - it expires. However, I don't see how having easy access to narcan (near fire extinguisher and AED) is a bad idea. Kids don't run around using fire extinguishers and AEDS, do they? But what you do need is for anyone who knows how to use narcan, to have easy access. If a true opioid overdose, narcan is the best antidote. Noone should run around wondering where's the narcan? where's the narcan?

Also, scare the sh$$ out of kids about why this is a national crisis? fentanyl is not like drug addiction from our days in HS. Far more potent and deadly.

Anonymous reporting to the SROs and teachers and leadership.

Those were was 9:06 said that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP, there is nothing more schools can do or that I think should be on schools to handle this. We are doing absolutely everything we can including obtaining narcan ourselves, as I did this weekend, and bringing it to school to have on hand if it’s needed. We are sitting outside the bathrooms check student passes so we know a) who is in which bathroom and b) for how long.

Your question is well intentioned but honestly a bit frustrating for me to read because why do you think it’s on us as TEACHERS to do more to address narcotic abuse? Do you not think already that having to watch kids for signs of respiratory distress or dilated pupils while also trying to teach is too much? I was helping a teacher locate one of her students in the hall last week because he hadn’t returned to class and she strongly suspected he was on something and was panicked. We routinely see ambulances pull up right outside our classroom windows to wheel out a kid having an emergency. I am talking weekly. One day recently, it happened twice in 30 minutes. Thank god both lived. I heard my AP panicked and yelling at the locked single stall restroom the other day for a kid to come out because when he didn’t answer she feared he was in distress or dead. It is our daily fear we will find a child dead in a bathroom, we have to teach around that, and you’re asking me what more do I want schools to do??

I want SOCIETY to do something. I want this country to not be such a depressing hellscape that teenagers don’t feel this desperate need for escapism at any cost. I want parents educating themselves on this, checking their kids’ rooms and bags, enforcing boundaries and structure. I want better for these children but it is not on schools to somehow manage this crisis.

Is this really what's going on? Or teens experiment with drugs as they've always done and now the risks are astronomically higher than they've ever been?

This country has more than it's fair share of problems but calling it a depressing hellscape seems a bit hyperbolic, particularly given how much of the world's population lives.

I've really started to believe the lack of accountability and expectations for these kids is also part of the problem. Time to face reality. Caught even once in the bathroom doing this? Suspended. Next time? Expelled. Get some undercover police officers in the schools to figure out who is dealing and bringing it in. And then bye. One strike and you're out. And just generally zero tolerance for kids who regularly show up in a way where they are not there to participate in learning. Clear and swift progressive discipline and then expel them.

Kids need boundaries and they need to know there are boundaries that will be enforced.

You may think it is hyperbole but it’s important you realize that that IS the mindset of most teenagers. They don’t see a very bright future. They see unaffordable college or college followed by a job with stagnant wages that will never allow them to buy a house . They see climate change. They see a future where they are guaranteed to have fewer opportunities for success than any generation before them. Yes experimentation is normal but there is a generational ennui and disaffection, compounded by of course the last 3 years of seeing every institution fail, that has profoundly altered their worldview. You ignore this or deny it at the risk of completely minimizing a huge driver of their behaviors and choices.

Most teenagers? I have two and don't see this as accurate. I don't think a whole lot of teenagers are actively thinking about how they won't be able to buy their first house or climate change down the road. Maybe they should be. But that's not how the teen brain works.

Teens very much live in the present. Social media is a big problem for many of them. Potential isolation from real-world interactions due to too much screen time, severely compounded by how our schools handled covid which broke the already tenuous thread many of them had to real-life relationships which then had to be rebuilt but many were not. Kids of a certain group, huge pressure to get into college.

I don't disagree with you that we need to look at more systemic issues, but the level of all consuming gloom and hysteria you're referencing isn't helping you make a case. Every institution failed? You don't want to see what life is like if every institution in our lives has legitimately failed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

I’m the same teacher PP. You cannot give children access to Narcan to use however they’ll use it. I’m also asking you to again consider that your “solution” is to essentially bring back DARE class (which doesn’t work) , rely on kids to snitch (they don’t), and make them responsible for administering a narcotic blocker to their own classmates. At school. You want kids being taught how to administer Narcan to their peers as part of their responsibility as a student. Please objectively look at how this is not only insane but morally reprehensible. The adults have Narcan and training. The adults do these things. This is NOT what we should just be foisting on teenagers as a matter of routine.

They can obtain it right now regardless of age so whether you get it in school or not they can get it and use "however they'll use it".

What will they do with it? use it to see what happens? Is that what you are afraid of? It doesn't have side effects. If it makes you feel better parents can sign a permission slip for their child to receive it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

I’m the same teacher PP. You cannot give children access to Narcan to use however they’ll use it. I’m also asking you to again consider that your “solution” is to essentially bring back DARE class (which doesn’t work) , rely on kids to snitch (they don’t), and make them responsible for administering a narcotic blocker to their own classmates. At school. You want kids being taught how to administer Narcan to their peers as part of their responsibility as a student. Please objectively look at how this is not only insane but morally reprehensible. The adults have Narcan and training. The adults do these things. This is NOT what we should just be foisting on teenagers as a matter of routine.

I was responding to the 9:06 poster (I am 9:08). I do not agree to giving narcan to every student - it expires. However, I don't see how having easy access to narcan (near fire extinguisher and AED) is a bad idea. Kids don't run around using fire extinguishers and AEDS, do they? But what you do need is for anyone who knows how to use narcan, to have easy access. If a true opioid overdose, narcan is the best antidote. Noone should run around wondering where's the narcan? where's the narcan?

Also, scare the sh$$ out of kids about why this is a national crisis? fentanyl is not like drug addiction from our days in HS. Far more potent and deadly.

Anonymous reporting to the SROs and teachers and leadership.

Those were was 9:06 said that makes sense.

It has a 3 year shelf life so I think the fears of it being expired are overblown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP, there is nothing more schools can do or that I think should be on schools to handle this. We are doing absolutely everything we can including obtaining narcan ourselves, as I did this weekend, and bringing it to school to have on hand if it’s needed. We are sitting outside the bathrooms check student passes so we know a) who is in which bathroom and b) for how long.

Your question is well intentioned but honestly a bit frustrating for me to read because why do you think it’s on us as TEACHERS to do more to address narcotic abuse? Do you not think already that having to watch kids for signs of respiratory distress or dilated pupils while also trying to teach is too much? I was helping a teacher locate one of her students in the hall last week because he hadn’t returned to class and she strongly suspected he was on something and was panicked. We routinely see ambulances pull up right outside our classroom windows to wheel out a kid having an emergency. I am talking weekly. One day recently, it happened twice in 30 minutes. Thank god both lived. I heard my AP panicked and yelling at the locked single stall restroom the other day for a kid to come out because when he didn’t answer she feared he was in distress or dead. It is our daily fear we will find a child dead in a bathroom, we have to teach around that, and you’re asking me what more do I want schools to do??

I want SOCIETY to do something. I want this country to not be such a depressing hellscape that teenagers don’t feel this desperate need for escapism at any cost. I want parents educating themselves on this, checking their kids’ rooms and bags, enforcing boundaries and structure. I want better for these children but it is not on schools to somehow manage this crisis.

Is this really what's going on? Or teens experiment with drugs as they've always done and now the risks are astronomically higher than they've ever been?

This country has more than it's fair share of problems but calling it a depressing hellscape seems a bit hyperbolic, particularly given how much of the world's population lives.

I've really started to believe the lack of accountability and expectations for these kids is also part of the problem. Time to face reality. Caught even once in the bathroom doing this? Suspended. Next time? Expelled. Get some undercover police officers in the schools to figure out who is dealing and bringing it in. And then bye. One strike and you're out. And just generally zero tolerance for kids who regularly show up in a way where they are not there to participate in learning. Clear and swift progressive discipline and then expel them.

Kids need boundaries and they need to know there are boundaries that will be enforced.

You may think it is hyperbole but it’s important you realize that that IS the mindset of most teenagers. They don’t see a very bright future. They see unaffordable college or college followed by a job with stagnant wages that will never allow them to buy a house . They see climate change. They see a future where they are guaranteed to have fewer opportunities for success than any generation before them. Yes experimentation is normal but there is a generational ennui and disaffection, compounded by of course the last 3 years of seeing every institution fail, that has profoundly altered their worldview. You ignore this or deny it at the risk of completely minimizing a huge driver of their behaviors and choices.

Most teenagers? I have two and don't see this as accurate. I don't think a whole lot of teenagers are actively thinking about how they won't be able to buy their first house or climate change down the road. Maybe they should be. But that's not how the teen brain works.

Teens very much live in the present. Social media is a big problem for many of them. Potential isolation from real-world interactions due to too much screen time, severely compounded by how our schools handled covid which broke the already tenuous thread many of them had to real-life relationships which then had to be rebuilt but many were not. Kids of a certain group, huge pressure to get into college.

I don't disagree with you that we need to look at more systemic issues, but the level of all consuming gloom and hysteria you're referencing isn't helping you make a case. Every institution failed? You don't want to see what life is like if every institution in our lives has legitimately failed.

Respectfully, your sample is 2. Your two. Their friends are probably a lot like them. I teach hundreds every year and interact with hundreds more day to day. I am face to face all day long in ways wonderful and terrible with teenagers and what they’re dealing with. The patterns and trends are much easier for someone in my position to discern. Again, you don’t have to like this or even agree but your experience is simply not comparable to mine in this area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

I’ll never stop being amused by parents who think “bathroom monitor” is a thing.

I'll never stop being amused by parents who are as naïve as you to think it wasn't. Yes, they were having security person monitor the bathrooms last year at Wakefield and they even locked some of them. They had students setting fires in the bathrooms and they didn't have enough people to monitor them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

They can give it to every student and I would assume some students would throw it away and yes it would expire so yeah put it in the hallways and put it in the bathrooms

The fact that multiple people think this is a good idea is proof of our country is the hellscape they’re using drugs to escape from. Depressing as hell. Let me know it works the first time a teenage CHILD freezes and doesn’t get or forgets how to use the Narcan, or it isn’t there, or they panic and do it wrong or the kid is too far gone and dies anyway. Now a teenagers gets to feel like it’s their fault a peer died. None of this is ok. This is SCHOOL, not Kensington Rd in Philadelphia, god

Take your head out of the sand, friend. Opioid overdose is a problem. The fact that it's in our schools is scary. We need to normalize narcan as a life saver, like we do with CPR. You seem to want to pretend it's not in our schools. It is and making narcan available seems like a good idea. If you wait for the paramedics, precious minutes go by and the brain continues to lose oxygen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^I agree with most of your points except giving narcan to every student. Narcan expires. But how about it be put in a lockbox (near the fire extinguishers or AED machines) where everyone knows where to access it? Make it easy-access?

They can give it to every student and I would assume some students would throw it away and yes it would expire so yeah put it in the hallways and put it in the bathrooms

The fact that multiple people think this is a good idea is proof of our country is the hellscape they’re using drugs to escape from. Depressing as hell. Let me know it works the first time a teenage CHILD freezes and doesn’t get or forgets how to use the Narcan, or it isn’t there, or they panic and do it wrong or the kid is too far gone and dies anyway. Now a teenagers gets to feel like it’s their fault a peer died. None of this is ok. This is SCHOOL, not Kensington Rd in Philadelphia, god

Do you all realize Narcan is in all the Arlington public libraries at this point? It's right next to the AED/defib machines. I don't find that depressing. It just seems smart. I would have thought it would have been in schools already in the same fashion.

So you're saying because it might make a kid feel bad in some way down the road, it shouldn't be there at all? Let's remove the AED machines too then. Wouldn't want to screw it up if someone has a heart attack.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

I’ll never stop being amused by parents who think “bathroom monitor” is a thing.

I'll never stop being amused by parents who are as naïve as you to think it wasn't. Yes, they were having security person monitor the bathrooms last year at Wakefield and they even locked some of them. They had students setting fires in the bathrooms and they didn't have enough people to monitor them.

Having a security person stop by the bathroom is not the same thing as creating this fantasy “bathroom monitor” position (that would go mostly infilled because who the eff would do that job?).