No school board, administrator or staff member can guarantee that their site is 100 percent safe for kids who have serious allergies. That said, you can take certain steps to reduce the risk to your kids:
- Ask your doctor to provide you with a prescription for extra emergency epinephrine pens so that you can give some pens to the school and make certain that your kids always have pens on them.
- Make a list of each kid’s allergies using a spreadsheet program where you break the allergies down in columns by type, reaction and treatment. Don’t write the list by hand as doing so can make it difficult for a nurse or teacher to read instructions.
- Craft a secondary list of potential ways that your child could suffer an exposure to an allergen. For example, if your child has severe peanut allergies, you might explain that even sitting at a lunch table where someone had been previously eating peanuts just before your child sat down could result in a reaction if any peanut debris found its way to the tabletop.
- Outline in writing allergen avoidance methods that your kids must practice and any ways that staff members and students can help your kids avoid exposures.
- Create small allergy cards for your kids to take with them on school trips that include an allergen source image, a reaction description and treatment instructions. For food allergies, always make certain that these cards include a laminated restaurant card to give to the wait staff and chefs that explains the nature of each food allergy and how to avoid cross-contamination in kitchen and dining areas.
- Set up a meeting with school officials before the start of the new school year to discuss your kids’ unique allergy problems and methods for working around them. Provide copies of your lists to officials at that time.