A six-year-old girl with a milk allergy was forced to clean up after herself by staff at Rollins Place Elementary in Zachary, Louisiana after she suffered diarrhea from consuming milk.
The girl’s mom, Jamisha Augustine, spoke of her conversation with an administrator at the school:
I said what was the point of making her clean that up? Do y’all have janitors? She said they do have janitors, but she needed a form of discipline. There are consequences behind the things that she does. I’m saying, how can you punish her for having an accident? I asked if she would make her daughter do that, and she said she would.
Augustine filled out forms and sent doctors’ notes with her daughter’s enrollment papers at the start of the school year indicating her milk allergy. She told of a past occurrence when her daughter had milk at breakfast and became sick almost immediately.
Speaking of her daughter, Augustine added:
She asked her teacher to go to the restroom, but she said no because she went too many times. So, upon her going to the office after having an accident the principal told her she was too big to be having accidents on herself.
Making her clean up feces, what was the point of that? That’s irresponsible. It’s hazardous and disgraceful, really pathetic.
You send a janitor in with the proper equipment. But, a six-year-old kid you are going to make them clean up poop without gloves. It’s disgraceful and should not have gone on in our school. It should not have happened.
Ben Necaise, the Superintendent of Zachary Community Schools, claims that the employees at the school have already been retrained and told “this is not acceptable.”
He said:
You learn from mistakes. You take ownership, accept them, and try to do what’s right by the child and parent. In hindsight, they realized that was not an appropriate step. We do have safety precautions that we have to abide by, and again a child should never be put in that situation to have to deal with that.
He added:
We have many students who have allergies and dietary restrictions and that’s something the cafeteria staff does well with to make sure that they follow those rules. So, if there’s a dietary restriction on file, they follow that closely.
Except, apparently, in this case.
Here follows the WAFB TV news report on the incident:
This episode is so awful that we cannot comprehend how a school in the 21st century could respond with such callousness and disregard for a student.
The teacher and administrator’s behavior was egregious, so much so that they should be disqualified from working in any education system and terminated.
And what about the superintendent’s assertion that “if there’s a dietary restriction on file, we follow that closely?” How does he explain that this poor girl with a documented milk allergy was given milk — which could have been life-threatening — and subsequently humiliated in front of her classmates?
We urge the State of Louisiana to scrutinize this case and bring charges against those involved.
