NANKIN — A middle school student from Mapleton said she still hasn’t fully recovered from a mysterious incident that left her and her peers hospitalized in August.
Hallie Kinter, 11, addressed the school board on Monday.
The soft-spoken student said she was “traumatized” from the Aug. 29 incident that caused the emergency evacuation of hundreds of students from the high school and middle school.
Overall, 43 students were transported to seven hospitals across five counties after experiencing headaches, dizziness, tingling toes, nausea and difficulty breathing.
District, health and law enforcement officials have yet to determine a cause but have ruled out criminal activity and irregularities in the district’s food services, water quality, chemicals and cleaning products, classroom activities, deliveries and other general operations.
Classes resumed Sept. 2 following the long weekend and several environmental tests returning negative in and around the building.
Seeing and hearing an ambulance causes Kinter to feel stressed and as if she will pass out, she said. She also expressed frustration about teachers and officials not checking in on her when she was “laying on the hospital bed.”
“They said my eyes were reacting slow … my blood sugar has still not been back to normal,” Kinter said.
A need for full-time registered nurse
Her mother, Amber Walton, said her daughter spent three days in the hospital following the Aug. 29 incident. A neurological exam pointed to carbon monoxide poisoning, Walton said.
Her friend, whom Kinter was with at school that day, also tested positive for carbon monoxide, Walton said.
Other parents have also reported abnormally high levels of carbon monoxide in their children following the incident.
Walton said her children, including Kinter, have been diagnosed with long-chain fatty acid oxidation disorder. It’s a rare genetic condition that prevents the body from breaking down long-chain fatty acids into energy during metabolism, effecting blood sugar levels.
Since March, the family has had a doctor’s note allowing school nurses to check blood sugar levels, a task that Walton said wasn’t done for Kinter on Aug. 29.
That’s partly why Walton asked district officials to consider employing a full-time trained nurse.
“If your child had a rare genetic condition and you have to trust them with a stranger that’s not a registered nurse or a medical professional, it’s very hard. I have watched my children almost die in front of me. It’s not easy,” she said, choking back tears.
Ohio schools are not mandated by state law to employ registered nurses. But they must provide a school health services program, which an RN can oversee. That’s what Mapleton does.
Superintendent Scott Smith said the district employs a part-time registered nurse who oversees the district’s health needs. The superintendent said the nurse is at the school “maybe 200 hours a year.”
When there, the nurse primarily works out of the district’s elementary school, Smith said. A health aid works at the adjoined middle and high schools.
Walton said she appreciated the district’s response to the incident, despite others’ pointed criticisms surrounding staffers’ day-of communication.
Several parents expressed frustration about not knowing where their children amidst the emergency. One parent said it took her 30 minutes before she discovered her daughter had been taken to a hospital.
“As a first-responder family, I know you can’t rush things,” Walton said. Her husband works as a detective for Ashland County Sheriff’s Office. “I know those parents wanted to know right now, right now. No, you can’t do that.
“You guys have to figure it out and make it clear. And you tried to make calmness out of chaos.”
However, Walton wishes the district had offered counseling services to students who, like her daughter, were traumatized by what they saw that day. She said Kinter is scheduled to see a psychologist to talk about the experience later this month.
Smith said he would “check into these things,” specifically Walton’s request for additional training for nurses or the employment of a full-time nurse.
Updates to Emergency Operations Plan
District officials and other local authorities have since made “significant revisions” to its emergency operations plan (EOP), Smith said.
One of the major updates involved students’ and staff’s use of cell phones during an emergency. The revised EOP allows students and staff to use their phones to call emergency responders, parents or guardians.
“The previous emergency operations plan didn’t have anything related to cell phones,” Smith said.
Enforcing the district’s cell phone use policy during the Aug. 29 incident was an area of concern for some parents. Some said their children were punished for using them that day.
Students aren’t permitted to have cell phones out and use them during the school day.
Smith said district officials have worked with law enforcement, health and other officials to finalize its updated EOP since the Aug. 29 incident. He said EOPs are not public documents.