- April 25, 2024
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The Flagler County School District will be encouraging kids not to share this year—at least, when it comes to food.
The move is part of a new policy created to protect kids with life-threatening allergies from the foods that could kill them, and help school staff prepare for students’ allergic reactions.
In a Sept. 3 presentation about the new policy for the Flagler County School Board, food service specialist Josephine Carrion called the district’s current policy insufficient for kids with life-threatening allergies.
"They'll put down on their emergency forms that they have a food allergy, but it pretty much stops there," she said. "It's time to have something in place."
The new plan encourages elementary schools to enforce a no-sharing policy in the cafeteria and bus drivers to enforce a no-eating policy on their buses, because some students’ allergies are so severe that being in an enclosed space with the food they’re allergic to can kill them.
About four to six percent of U.S. children have food allergies, according to the Center for Disease Control. The most common food allergies are to peanuts, tree nuts, milk, eggs, shellfish, fish, soy and wheat.
Allergic reactions can range from fairly mild—itches, swelling, a rash—to fatal. In an acute allergic reaction, called anaphylaxis, a child may go into shock or stop breathing.
The best way to stop the reaction is to administer epinephrine, also called adrenaline, which comes in autoinjectors containing pre-measured doses. Flagler schools already keep them in their nurses’ stations, but that’s often too far away from classrooms and from the cafeteria, where they’re most likely to be needed, Carrion said.
To work, the drug needs to be administered quickly, and any delay—like a school nurse dashing from one end of a school campus to the other to administer it—could be fatal.
Under the new plan, autoinjectors would be placed in multiple parts of the school, including the home-room of a child with a food allergy.
Schools would also file an Allergy Action Plan for each student with a life-threatening food allergy, working with the child’s doctor and a school nurse to identify ways to make the school environment safer for them.
That may mean giving the child a special table in the cafeteria, taking extra care to clean surfaces the child may touch that could have come into contact with food, or even banning certain foods from the classroom.
But under the new plan, schools will also make sure parents understand that the school environment is not allergen-free.
“It stipulates to parents that we are an allergy-smart school district, not an allergen-free school district,” Carrion said. “You don’t want to create a false sense of security.”
