Following rules is important, but policy should never come at the cost of a person’s safety and well-being, especially when that person is a 6-year-old child. That said, a parent in New York went to an event for their daughter at a high school and brought medication and snacks for their 6-year-old hypoglycemic son with type 1 diabetes. However, security stopped the parent, telling them that they had a “hard no food rule” and no snacks were allowed, even if they were for medical purposes. Bizarrely, the staff even tried to take away the diabetic child’s glucagon pen and insulin from him.
If the son did end up needing the snacks or medication for his hypoglycemia, the staff of the New York school said they had to let security handle it instead of the parent. When asked why they should let security be relied on to help treat their son’s medical condition, they bluntly replied that there were “no exceptions.” “Would allowing him to bring in an emergency snack be considered a reasonable accommodation under the ADA?” the parent asked Reddit’s r/legaladvice, confused by this weird fiasco with the school staff and their ‘policy.’
“Really sounds like the school is full of idiots,” remarks a Reddit user, annoyed by how the staff acted. “They tried to take a child’s medication? Big yikes. I’d call the admin over that alone,” chimes in another. It goes without saying that “what security was doing there was wrong and illegal under the ADA.” Fortunately, the parent wasn’t going to take the discrimination against his diabetic 6-year-old lying down. They eventually were able to contact the superintendent of the New York school, who apologized and “pretended to be ashamed” of what happened.
“An exemption should have been made, and staff will be retrained,” she told the parent. Still, regardless of whether security and staff at the school are retrained, it should have been common sense to let a child with a medical condition have their basic necessities, in this case, snacks, glucagon, and insulin. Taking those away can make for a very dangerous situation if their blood sugar were to drop, after all.
