Our first emails from the school

by philg

How is everyone enjoying the school year so far? Here’s the first communication I received from the elementary school…

This letter is to inform you that a student in your child’s classroom has a severe allergy to peanuts and tree nuts. Strict avoidance of all peanut/tree nut products is the only way to prevent a life-threatening allergic reaction. … [bold in the original]

Our town’s school system also runs a preschool. Here’s the first email from the teacher.

Subject: IMPORTANT

Welcome to preschool! I am so excited to spend this school year with all of your children and I can tell we are going to build a strong, positive classroom community.

** I wanted to be sure that everyone is aware that we have a strict “no peanut/tree nut” policy at the preschool. This includes items that were manufactured or processed in a facility that also processes peanuts or tree nuts, so please be sure to check labels carefully. Tomorrow (or on your child’s first day) I will be sending home a notice from the nurse explaining the policy.

…

Related:

  • web site regarding the debate in our town about whether to tear down the current school, move the children into trailers for three years, and spend $100 million on rebuilding the school in-place (maybe proponents could win this debate simply by saying “we found a nut in a classroom so now we are forced to demolish the old building”?)

 

17 thoughts on “Our first emails from the school”

  2. My former employer, Delta, remains devoted to this product of Georgia. See https://www.delta.com/us/en/accessible-travel-services/dietary-needs-and-allergies for how peanuts can be temporarily segregated on request and you can also go Felix Unger: “If you would like additional time during the boarding process to clean your seat area, please let the gate agent know that you would like to pre-board.”

    So the hazards on a Delta regional jet include a First Officer potentially fresh from flying four-seaters (but with some sim training!), the crash axe (see https://www.lifesupportintl.com/products/tools/axe-aircraft-crash/ ), and the foil-wrapped peanuts.

  3. I know it sounds silly, and once upon a time I would have thought so too. But then my daughter turned out to be severely allergic to peanuts.

    I don’t know why this is increasingly common. I wish I had a good answer, and I wish something could be done about it besides banning nuts at school. But since preschool and elementary school kids are not exactly the most careful of humans, I would think that’s probably a reasonably not-bad solution, no?

  5. Peanuts B: I’m sorry to hear that about your daughter. I hope that she grows out of it and/or that her allergy can be reduced in severity with some gradual dosing of peanuts (see http://time.com/3719341/peanut-allergy-cure-treatment/ ).

    I don’t think it is unreasonable to ban nuts from the classroom. I just thought it was funny that this was the first communication from the school on any subject, thus giving the impression that the primary mission of the school is nut-related.

    (Do they need to have parents scrutinizing labels for “manufactured or processed in a facility that also processes peanuts or tree nuts”? How many Americans are hospitalized or die each year from residues and vapors from packaged food that is not supposed to contain any nuts? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589409/ says that fatal food anaphylaxis is roughly as prevalent as death from being struck by lightning. I don’t think that the researchers found any deaths from residues/vapors, only from peanuts, tree nuts, and other food items themselves.)

    The deeper questions…

    1) why do parents and kids have to pack snacks? Why can’t the school stock a huge quantity of cheese sticks, crackers, apples, etc. for the classroom? Wouldn’t that be a more efficient use of human resources (maybe not if it has to be done by a school employee with benefits and pension?)? For the lower-income children, schools are already serving multiple free meals per day. (See http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/09/08/low-effort-parenting-in-massachusetts-via-metco/ for how easy it can be to be a parent!) Maybe it would be more efficient to get easy-to-serve snacks and just give them free to everyone.

    2) why do schools serve lunch? Why can’t they pack in the learning 7:30-12 or 8-12 and then send children on their merry way? (as is done in some other countries)

  6. Imagine if you were to get on a commercial flight and the first things that the pilots and flight attendants told you about were peanuts and tree nuts. That would never happen, right? The crew wouldn’t want you to think that they were focused on something other than safely getting you to your destination. That’s why it is strange to see a $30,000+/student-year enterprise ($21,000/student-year in operating expense plus a planned $100 million capital project for about 450 town-resident students) leading with the nuts rather than something related to their headline objective of education.

  8. Maybe calling in a peanut exposure would be like a bomb threat but much lower risk if you get caught.

  11. I thought there was a landmark study that discovered that kids in Israel had much lower peanut allergies than those in the US, due to the fact that there was a snack there for infants which were essentially peanut wafers.

    So the theory is simply that by avoiding nut exposure to our infants we are producing severe allergies in them, and that instead we should expose them as soon as possible.

  13. @Henry: there’s been more than one study now that shows that early exposure to peanuts actually leads to fewer allergies. So this bullshit of no peanuts allowed is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The parents that think they are doing good would be helping their kids much better if they gave them peanuts and nuts from early on.

  14. This week my kids started 1st grade in Germany. I went to parent-teacher meetings, opening day, etc. Lots of forms and instructions but not a single mention about peanuts or allergies in general.

    USA is just crazy town these days. You should check out this documentary by Orsen Welles about Basque country. Even back then in 1955 american education was lamented by this American woman journalist who moved to Basque country (she said American schools are too easy compared to European schools – the boy agreed). It starts at min 9:30 , here:

    @philg In germany , kids start at 8:20 (sometimes 7:30) and stop at 11:30 is what Germans do here. But my wife would go bonkers having them back so soon so we pay for the after day care until 4:00pm which includes various sports, forest excursions, and building tree houses, art and music lessons, etc.

  16. @BringPeanuts, by the time the kids get to elementary school it’s a little late to matter whether or not they could have avoided being allergic if only they had been exposed earlier. So it’s not “bullshit”, nor is it a self-fulfilling prophecy, since your prescribed exposure therapy at the elementary school level would not in fact prevent any allergies but would only trigger a perhaps fatal reaction in those who were already allergic. The studies you read about may well be right, but it’s a moot point by the time you start getting emails asking you to leave the peanuts at home.

  17. @Peanuts Begone, I did not mention this should only take effect at elementary school. As Philg mentions also, it happens at preschool, and in my experience at all levels of daycare, kindergarten, etc. More importantly, it reinforces the wrong idea that peanuts and nuts are bad, which leads to other overcautious parents to prevent younger kids from having them, therefore making the problem worse. It is not by accident that peanut allergies are almost non-existent in Asia (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563019/), where kids have a lot more exposure to peanut products. Even with exposure, there will always be allergic people, but from what I read, it can significantly reduce the number of anaphylaxis.

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