A teenager who popped her birth control pill during her lunch period at a Virginia school is spending her spring break fighting the district not to be expelled.
The problem? That she did so during school hours. . . specifically, that she took a pill without supervision of the school nurse.
Her mother says she's aware the girl violated school rules, but she's questioning just how far a school should go with its punishment. Two weeks suspension and recommended expulsion for taking a legally prescribed drug? Does that sound fair?
It's a problem for plenty of parents in America - not birth control per se - but medicine. Kids take a lot of it - just this week, a study showed the precipitous rise in the number of kids who require medication to control their blood pressure and diabetes. And those are just two diseases. What about asthma, allergies, ADHD? Not to mention your standard headache or menstral cramps which could use an over-the-counter fix. All legal drugs, and not always feasible to take at home. Some medicines require several dosages in a day, for example, spaced out over time. Others require kids take them at the same time of day, every day. And a headache doesn't come on to suit the school schedule.
Meanwhile, schools are steadily trying to fight the tide of youthful prescription drug abusers in the America - a number that's up fivefold in the twelve-to-seventeen bracket in the past decade and a half. They call for students to take all medicines to the nurse's office, where the school health official is charged with handing out the prescription drugs to the students at the appropriate time in the appropriate dose.
It's what the girl in Fairfax should have done, what even her mom admits she should have done. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for every kid. In part because some school districts refuse to condone over-the-counter medications because they do not come with a doctor's note that can be kept in the nurse's office. And in part because kids need medicines at different times during the day; times when the nurse's office isn't always open. Some schools have cut back on the availability of nursing staff too, sharing one nurse for several buildings - so kids end up handing their medicines over to office staff, who parents argue are often even less informed about the proper use of the medication than the kids themselves, who have been taking the drugs for years.
And school districts have gone overboard. The Washington Post article that shares the Fairfax family's story cites a since-overturned law from Maryland that required a doctor's note for kids to put on sunscreen. Really? Because we'd rather the kids all end up with skin cancer over a legal substance that's available over the counter in any Wal-Mart in the country, for sale to anyone of any age?
With birth control too there's the worry that being so strict on teens dulls the efficacy of the fight against teen pregnancy. Wouldn't we rather our teens were taking the pill than skipping it? And despite the school's claims that this wasn't about what kind of
drug but the fact that it was a drug, period, I can't help but wondering if they would have threatened explusion over, I don't know, aspirin? I'm not defending the girl in Virginia for her actions - birth control pills are to be taken at the same time every day, but there's no reason she couldn't have been on a schedule of taking them in the morning before school or at night.
She was wrong and deserved to be punished, but isn't expulsion for a LEGAL drug a little much? Do you feel the schools have gone too far in reaching into our medicine cabinets?
Image: AC
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