KISD Suspends Student For Leaving Class To Carry Asthmatic Student To Nurse's Office

[amigocabal]

As if this would encourage people to support continued (let alone increased) funding for public education.

http://www.kcentv.com/story/31018377/ki ... ses-office

A Killeen mother is defending her son who was suspended after helping a fellow student having an asthma attack.

Anthony Ruelas, 15, said his eighth grade classmate was wheezing and gagging for three minutes Tuesday morning while no one did anything. But when Ruelas did do something, he apparently broke the rules.

“He may not follow instructions all the time, but he does have a great heart,” said Mandy Cortes, Ruelas’ mother.

Ruelas goes to Gateway Middle School, an alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District. Ruelas has been suspended before, but Tuesday was different.

"I wasn't trying to hear it,” said Cortez. When she picked her son up from school for the suspension she told him,”No, they already told me what happened you walked out of class, and he was like 'ok forget it', but I can tell, ya know you know your kids, I could tell he was upset."

The reason Ruelas walked out of class? He was carrying a friend to the nurse’s office.

"I was like what? I'm suspended for this? Like, I was trying to help her,” said Ruelas.

According to Ruelas, the teacher was waiting on an email from the nurse and told the class to remain calm and stay in their seats. Fearing for the girl’s health, Ruelas didn’t listen and after several minutes of inaction, went against the teacher’s wishes to help his friend.

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[Broomstick]

Yes, part of society values following the rules over saving lives. There should be an exception when someone is acting to preserve life and health. In other words, a lot of people are fucking morons.

If I see someone gasping and wheezing by the side of the road and stop to help I'm protected by Good Samaritan laws, but Og forbid we extend the same right to school kids.

[Elheru Aran]

I'm not really sure how this is an incrimination of public education in any way. The main thing I see is a teacher who couldn't be arsed to take care of her kids properly. You have a child that you're (sort of) responsible for having an asthma attack in the middle of class, you don't drop an email to the nurse-- you send that kid there. It's less disruptive than having the minor drama happening in the middle of class.

That said, I expect there's a host of shitty regulations going on. There's a lot of situations out there where teachers are simply not permitted to do anything without explicit permission or following rules, and it really depends on the school system and how bass-ackwards it is.

[Simon_Jester]

Speaking as someone who's actually been in a comparable position there are TWO overriding issues, and note that (1) is obviously more important than (2).

1) Safety of the dangerous ill student.
2) The fact that sending the dangerously ill student out into the halls, escorted only by a minor, is not your first resort. Because if said legal minor decides to wander off or do something stupid, you are liable. If you are worried about the reliability of this specific child,* it is entirely reasonable to think "this child is not the person I want doing this."

Here is the correct response to my way of thinking, and I say this having gone through all of these steps on multiple occasions:

A) Establish calm and order in the room to the best of your ability, quickly. A large group of modern teenagers are very good at "flash crowding" their way into anything that looks like a crisis, to the point where they actively endanger the people involved, especially in a medical emergency. If order cannot be established quickly, lose a bit more of your faith in humanity and proceed to (B) anyway.
B) Attempt to speak with the dangerously ill student to find out what is wrong and what they need. If they are noncommunicative (this has happened to me), worry harder and proceed to (C) anyway.
C) Place an immediate call via telephone or intercom to the nurse's office, to the administrative staff, or to the front office to find a responsible adult to escort the dangerously ill child. Note, to emphasize, an email is NOT an acceptable alternative. If an adult to escort the child cannot be found in a timely manner, curse your co-workers quietly, and proceed to (D) anyway.
D) Detail one or two students, preferably two if there is doubt as to whether the student can walk, to escort them to the nurse. Do not wait for volunteers unless suitable children volunteer.

Suitable children are those who are physically capable of handling the student in question if they start to fall.** They are also those you can be confident will for-serious, no-bullshit actually deal with the serious problem at hand and not abandon the kid in the middle of the halls to asphyxiate because they got sidetracked talking to someone. I've known students I wouldn't trust on this point.

Friends of the dangerously ill child are to be preferred, if they meet the first two qualifications.

Ruelas would almost certainly pass the first test. Without knowing him personally I cannot guess whether he'd pass the second but I'm sure someone in that room would have.

Sounds like this teacher somehow got stuck on (A), a phase which you really shouldn't be burning more than, oh, 15-30 seconds on. I have no idea if they bothered with (B), they flubbed (C), and then forgot entirely about (D).

All of which is a disgrace unless there is one HELL of a good explanation, or unless the situation is being lied about. Since literally the only people I know contributed to this media report are Ruelas and his mother, there is a slim chance in my mind (i.e. single digit percentage) that some misrepresentation of the facts is involved. But I doubt it.

And, I repeat, if this is what it looks like, the teacher got stuck on (A), which is a disgrace. Alternatively, the teacher may or may not be a total disgrace, while their school has idiotic regulations in place and an idiot running the place. Which seems likely given that the student was suspended, which requires administrative-level participation.
_________________

*(Say, for any of the variety of reasons which might explain why they are fifteen and in the eighth grade)
**(Slender kids who haven't topped five feet yet should not be tasked to escort kids who are 5'8" and overweight, unless you send a squad of them)

As if this would encourage people to support continued (let alone increased) funding for public education.

Can you please explain how this is an indictment of public schools? Private schools have been doing insane things that got students endangered, or unjustly suspending them, for a long time; there are entire genres of British literature built around the injustices of the private (i.e. run for profit) boys' schools of the 19th and early 20th century.

[bilateralrope]

an alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District

What exactly is an "alternative school" ?

[Elheru Aran]

an alternative school in the Killeen Independent School District

What exactly is an "alternative school" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_school

Relevant portion:

An alternative school is an educational establishment with a curriculum and methods that are nontraditional.[1][2] Such schools offer a wide range of philosophies and teaching methods; some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, while others are more ad hoc assemblies of teachers and students dissatisfied with some aspect of mainstream or traditional education.

Some schools are based on pedagogical approaches differing from that of the mainstream pedagogy employed in a culture, while other schools are for gifted students, children with special needs, children who have fallen off the track educationally, children who wish to explore unstructured or less rigid system of learning, etc.

So basically just not a regular school. If it's part of the public school district, however, one could reasonably assume that apart from specific points relevant to the individual school teachers and administrative staff would be expected to adhere to the same rules and regulations of the school district.

[TheFeniX]

Gateway Middle School? Is my google weak, or are there only 73 kids attending? Small schools, teachers may not be held to the same standards. I don't know how alternative schools work in conjuction with an ISD as I've only worked with standard public schools and private schools. Of note: private schools can generally do whatever the fuck they want. Public schools get routed into the "here's procedure, follow it or we stomp you."

They may not even have phones. I've worked in regular schools that relied on locally hosted Exchange e-mail, setup like an instant messenger system, because they could not afford PBX or IP phones. One used an actual messaging system, like AOL Instant Messenger, but local. One used IRC. I don't know how affluent KISD is (seems to be), but schools out in the sticks work with what they got. And, for some reason: K-5 and 9-12 seem to get the lion's share of the money in my (dated) experience.

[Simon_Jester]

I would pull out my own cell phone and call the front office for support if that was what it took. Heck, I have done that, although only when I needed to contact the office and wasn't in a classroom to do so.

Instant messaging isn't good enough either.

Hm. Alternative school, public school, enrollment of seventy-three... I would guess a school primarily focused on students with behavior-related disabilities or problems, which might also explain the fifteen year old eighth-graders (indicating the student was held back at least one year, very probably two, unless there's some stranger explanation like delayed enrollment).

Please note that on the strength of the evidence available, Ruelas was in the right, I would like to repeat that.

[bilateralrope]

Please note that on the strength of the evidence available, Ruelas was in the right, I would like to repeat that.

The only people disputing that are the school. Who also think that email is an appropriate tool to use in a medical emergency.

I'm not even sure how much the school is disputing it. The only thing the school has said is that they aren't going to talk about this incident. Which is a reasonable position as talking about it requires them to talk about details that people would normally prefer to be kept private.

[Simon_Jester]

Right. Schools don't normally dispense information about student suspensions, or student medical issues, to the press.

Without knowing the actual policies of the school or their history, or any of the individuals involved, my gut says (as you believe) "Welp, the school done screwed up."

However, a narrow part of me which has had a lot of its faith in humanity burned out (see step A in my first post in the thread, among other things) thinks there is some possibility that the real facts of the case might maybe possibly cast the school in a better light; I've known adolescents to be quite creative in misrepresenting the reasons they got into trouble.

[Zaune]

Hm. Alternative school, public school, enrollment of seventy-three... I would guess a school primarily focused on students with behavior-related disabilities or problems, which might also explain the fifteen year old eighth-graders (indicating the student was held back at least one year, very probably two, unless there's some stranger explanation like delayed enrollment).

That would explain why the teacher didn't take the seemingly obvious step of escorting the ill student to the nurse's office themselves, which is what I'd expect a teacher to have done when I was in school.

[Korto]

This kind of reaction, the suspension, could suggest some measure of embarrassment--the student's actions highlighted the incompetent response on the part of the teacher, and, even if on a subconscious level, that's what the student is really being punished for.

It may instead be the teacher felt they had the situation well in control, and then this discipline case defied direct instructions, leaving no other choice.

Email for a medical emergency I've got emails from over a fortnight ago I haven't even read.
Which brings up another question--did the teacher regard an asthma attack as a medical emergency? One would hope so, but there are some people who seem to regard it as "just being difficult".

[Flagg]

"Alternative School" is code for "School for Expelled Students". See, by law, you can't deny a kid in the US public education, so if they are "Expelled", it doesn't mean they sit home until the next semester, it means they go to a school where the rules of conduct are much stricter, so this kid is essentially a delinquent repeat-offender.

[Simon_Jester]

Probably. There are some exceptions to that pattern, and certain types of unusual or unconventional schools might be labeled 'alternative' in some places without being the sort of thing you describe, Flagg.

But yeah, you're almost certainly right. "Alternative school" usually means "school for students with severe behavioral problems." The ones who aren't ready for abstract learning, because they need a couple of years of having a drill sergeant teach them to be functional humans capable of achieving an assigned goal in groups first.

[Flagg]

Well, in Brevard county Florida it was literally for the kids who got expelled. Every school had its own "special education" department for kids with mental & physical disabilities/ illnesses who couldn't function in or would be too much of a distraction for the "mainstream" classes. And not every one of those kids spent all day there when they got to the Junior and Senior High-School level where there were different periods and teachers for different subjects.

I know this because when I was discharged from Residential Treatment for bipolar/depression I had 2 periods in those classes for a few months just so they could monitor me before I was back completely in mainstream classes.

I also had a friend who accidentally brought a small fishing knife to school because it had been a 3 day weekend and he'd gone fishing with his father, left it in his dirty pants, the knife stayed in them when they got washed and when he wore them the next week he reached into his pocket for something and found it. Then he did the stupid honest thing and went to a vice dean to give it to them and explained what happened. He got expelled and was sent to the "Alternative School". Thus proving that honesty gets you absolutely nowhere in an authoritarian system where the excuse for ruining someone's academic life and prospects for a good college/ university is "It's zero tolerance, I was just following orders!"

[His Divine Shadow]

Gateway Middle School? Is my google weak, or are there only 73 kids attending? Small schools, teachers may not be held to the same standards. I don't know how alternative schools work in conjuction with an ISD as I've only worked with standard public schools and private schools. Of note: private schools can generally do whatever the fuck they want. Public schools get routed into the "here's procedure, follow it or we stomp you."

They may not even have phones. I've worked in regular schools that relied on locally hosted Exchange e-mail, setup like an instant messenger system, because they could not afford PBX or IP phones. One used an actual messaging system, like AOL Instant Messenger, but local. One used IRC. I don't know how affluent KISD is (seems to be), but schools out in the sticks work with what they got. And, for some reason: K-5 and 9-12 seem to get the lion's share of the money in my (dated) experience.

Small schools, lesser standards? Is that some american thing. Here smaller schools usually correlate to better education and overall better environment with less bullying etc, but not better economics compared to huge schools with bigger classrooms. So they're loosing out.

[Simon_Jester]

It depends. Some of our best schools are small schools with strong faculties and high standards. Some of our worst schools are small schools with faculties who desperately don't want to be there, and low standards because they're the dumping ground for the worst of the worst.

Well, in Brevard county Florida it was literally for the kids who got expelled. Every school had its own "special education" department for kids with mental & physical disabilities/ illnesses who couldn't function in or would be too much of a distraction for the "mainstream" classes. And not every one of those kids spent all day there when they got to the Junior and Senior High-School level where there were different periods and teachers for different subjects.

I know this because when I was discharged from Residential Treatment for bipolar/depression I had 2 periods in those classes for a few months just so they could monitor me before I was back completely in mainstream classes.

Ayup. This is the norm for major school districts. SPED is its own thing and SPED students tend to be mainstreamed into the general high school population as far as possible.

I also had a friend who accidentally brought a small fishing knife to school because it had been a 3 day weekend and he'd gone fishing with his father, left it in his dirty pants, the knife stayed in them when they got washed and when he wore them the next week he reached into his pocket for something and found it. Then he did the stupid honest thing and went to a vice dean to give it to them and explained what happened. He got expelled and was sent to the "Alternative School". Thus proving that honesty gets you absolutely nowhere in an authoritarian system where the excuse for ruining someone's academic life and prospects for a good college/ university is "It's zero tolerance, I was just following orders!"

I have never understood the mindset of the "zero judgment" idiot administrators who do stuff like this. The people at my school aren't like this.

[Elheru Aran]

Small schools, lesser standards? Is that some american thing. Here smaller schools usually correlate to better education and overall better environment with less bullying etc, but not better economics compared to huge schools with bigger classrooms. So they're loosing out.

It depends. Some of our best schools are small schools with strong faculties and high standards. Some of our worst schools are small schools with faculties who desperately don't want to be there, and low standards because they're the dumping ground for the worst of the worst.

To my (limited) understanding it's mostly a matter of funding, and whether you're talking about public or private. In public schools generally the most funds get assigned to the larger schools merely because they need them more, but also because of bullshit reasons like athletic reputation or whatever. There can be legitimate reasons such as financing higher level educational programs and such. However, you can see some large schools that get near to nothing (most notably in urban areas) where smaller schools in the more prosperous suburbs get bigger chunks of funding. So it's a fairly situational thing.

Now, private schools are almost always smaller (colleges and universities are another matter). However, *in general* they tend to be better funded thanks to grants from public money and parents with the money to send their kids to private school. This can correlate to a better education with more personal attention... or it can correlate to being indoctrinated into some variety of right-wing fundamentalist theory, depending on the school.

[Flagg]

I also had a friend who accidentally brought a small fishing knife to school because it had been a 3 day weekend and he'd gone fishing with his father, left it in his dirty pants, the knife stayed in them when they got washed and when he wore them the next week he reached into his pocket for something and found it. Then he did the stupid honest thing and went to a vice dean to give it to them and explained what happened. He got expelled and was sent to the "Alternative School". Thus proving that honesty gets you absolutely nowhere in an authoritarian system where the excuse for ruining someone's academic life and prospects for a good college/ university is "It's zero tolerance, I was just following orders!"

I have never understood the mindset of the "zero judgment" idiot administrators who do stuff like this. The people at my school aren't like this.

It's pure "CYA" (cover your ass) mentality. They are so terrified of being sued or fired for not following the zero tolerance policies to the absolute fucking letter that they allow no room for leeway under any circumstances.

Like a HS Senior in southern FL not long after Columbine who had used her vehicle to haul boxes when she and her parents moved to a new house who was expelled, had to repeat the year even though it was mid-April, and was kicked off the honor roll because a steak knife had apparently fallen out of one of the boxes. And was just viewable resting between the back seat and a rear door. The fact that there were a few forks, spoons, and that her mother came in and vouched for her didn't make a fuck of difference and they still expelled her and made her repeat the year. Because having cutlery in the car you park on school property = terrorism.

[Simon_Jester]

I have to wonder what percentage of schools are dumb like this. I'd be... deeply disappointed if it were in the double digits, but who knows.

[biostem]

Is it at all possible that it may have been wiser to keep the asthmatic child calm and seated, and wait for help to come to them instead? If the child had died en route due to the trip being too stressful, would we be saying the same thing?

[bilateralrope]

Is it at all possible that it may have been wiser to keep the asthmatic child calm and seated, and wait for help to come to them instead? If the child had died en route due to the trip being too stressful, would we be saying the same thing?

It might have been if they knew nurse was coming. But all they knew was that the nurse hadn't responded to the email sent asking for help. There was no way to know if the nurse was coming or not. Which means that the safest option was to assume that the email remained unread. At which point the student had three choices:
- Do nothing. Hope that help is coming.
- Fight the teacher for a phone. Try to ring the nurse when he doesn't know the number to call.
- Take the asthmatic student to the nurses office.

[biostem]

Is it at all possible that it may have been wiser to keep the asthmatic child calm and seated, and wait for help to come to them instead? If the child had died en route due to the trip being too stressful, would we be saying the same thing?

It might have been if they knew nurse was coming. But all they knew was that the nurse hadn't responded to the email sent asking for help. There was no way to know if the nurse was coming or not. Which means that the safest option was to assume that the email remained unread. At which point the student had three choices:
- Do nothing. Hope that help is coming.
- Fight the teacher for a phone. Try to ring the nurse when he doesn't know the number to call.
- Take the asthmatic student to the nurses office.

Yeah... at the very least, if the nurse doesn't respond immediately, call 911.

[Broomstick]

Never had an asthma attack yourself, have you?

The human mind is not wired to stay calm when the body is struggling to breathe and it feels like you're being strangled. Some people manage to pull it off, I'd suppose, but I very much doubt a child is going to be "calm" under a severe attack. Being carried is NOWHERE near as "stressful" as not being able to breathe. The only thing comparable to the panic I have felt during a severe asthma attack - with my vision tunneling down, color bleeding out of the world, my chest on fire, and clawing the skin of my throat literally bloody as I struggled to draw in my next sip of air - was being on a burning airplane. Or maybe i'm just a too-delicate chicken-shit coward or something... no, it really is that awful.

Really, anyone who has been in that circumstance is going to laugh at the notion that being carried to help is somehow "too stressful". It's not. That teeny bit of stress is going to be utterly lost in the stress of the pain and terror that comes from lungs that are not functioning properly.

During a severe asthma attack time is of the essence. It's a life-threatening medical emergency that if poorly handled can result in death or brain damage. You don't fucking E-MAIL for "instructions". You call 911. If the teacher couldn't be bothered to actually ACT then carrying the girl to someone who WOULD actually do something to help her is an entirely reasonable option.

So no, I don't think telling the girl to say "calm" and just sit there until someone could be arsed to offer help was the best option. You can't wait that long. During an asthma attack someone can stop breathing just as effectively as if a noose was drawn tight around their neck. If that happens (thank Og it doesn't always, but if it does..) you have just minutes before before severe damage or death. After 5 minutes the person is probably dead, or brain dead. After 10 minutes the person will be most sincerely dead.

In case you're wondering - if the asthmatic can speak at all, even if just a word at a time, they are still getting some air. If they fall silent they are dying. They can't wait for help. You have to DO SOMETHING if they're going to have a chance to survive. By why the fuck would anyone wait until it got that bad? That's why you're supposed to do something BEFORE it reaches that stage.

[bilateralrope]

Yeah... at the very least, if the nurse doesn't respond immediately, call 911.

With what phone ?

We are talking about the actions of a student in a school for students with discipline problems.