I still don't understand how they think banning it will work... my convoluted tangent thinking mind just can't accept that that will create a clean environment. I picture kids at McD's, eating a burger and playing and stepping on a piece of peanut from someone else's sundae (they didn't order one just in case) and then that piece being tracked into the school and that's all it would take. Washing hands, even mouths, wouldn't do doodly to stop that from happening. The only way for someone with an airborne allergy to be 100% protected would be in a total clean room/lab environment where people are sterilized upon entry... and even if every child and parent, every staff member, was totally okay with being stripped and hosed there's no way a public school's budget could afford those kinds of safeguards.
I'm not even sure how you could totally protect your own home with an allergy like this... that alone, small family of three, no visitors, etc I guess it's possible but hard. But trying to get hundreds of students, parents and employees to manage it... and any one they might come in contact with, any business they visit... etc. I just do not see it as possible.
Especially if this school is anything like mine growing up where I (in elementary) rode a bus with kids from the intermediate, jr high and high schools. Any of those kids had PB at home, it could rub off on an elementary student and boom, bad reaction. So you'd have to alter the lives of any student (and their families) who rides a bus with any student (and their families) who attends that school.
Then there are the day cares. Parents drop their kids there at 7am, kids eat there, then ride a van to their respective schools. Any one of those kids has a peanut smudge and boom, reaction. So you'd have to alter the lives of any child in that day care (and their families) who might come in contact with any child (and their families) who goes to school with the student that has the allergy.
If it was ingestion or even physical contact then a ban and washing would work. Sharing food isn't allowed, so pack your kid's lunch and the teacher's keep a good eye, that peanut free table idea maybe too and you're okay. Kissing and wrestling aren't allowed so just keep an extra eye (ban tag and red robin) for no touching and you're okay. But this kind... well it's like trying to ban Hydrogen or Pollen from the air... dern near impossible unless you're doing a strip and sterilize like workers in a radiation or biological weapon lab.
It's going to be AWFUL when after all this work, all this drama, this child STILL manages to get hurt... obviously for the child, and for the parents who'll blame themselves and possibly everyone else and probably sue either way, but also for the kids, parents and staff who'll be trying like mad to figure out who the 'bad guy' was and praying that it wasn't them that hurt this child, albeit accidentally, and now has to live with it.
That's the reason that if it was me I'd do what I had to. Whether that's online public school from home, offered for free here in Texas... and me not be able to work so have to majorly trim the budget (which we already did simply because the school was failing) or if that meant writing the mayor, congressmen, senators, governor, heck the freakin' president to see to it that this issue was addressed. I just do not believe that ANY public building can every be a safe environment for someone with this severe a reaction over so little contamination. It just is NOT worth the risk of my child's life... I don't have to drive a new car or have a 3000sf house or be the ball-breaking business woman... my kiddo comes first.
And all that is on top of my beliefs about rights and personal responsibility...
