The boys and girls at Boulder Creek Elementary School are learning how to be peanut-conscious this year after the school banned peanut products from its kindergarten classrooms and its cafeteria and day care center.
The measures, which started this school year, aim to prevent exposing any student to potentially life-threatening allergies, according to Boulder Creek Elementary principal Lynn Chappell.
Items not allowed in the kindergarten classrooms include peanut butter and anything with peanut oil as an ingredient.
“A lot of schools over the hill are completely peanut-free, so this isn’t anything new,” Chappell said. “We’re just trying to keep our students safe.”
She said the school is being more proactive this year, because it has more students who are deeply allergic to peanuts and their byproducts.
Four students have life-threatening allergies to peanuts, Chappell said.
Some of the teachers at the school have been trained to use epinephrine autoinjectors to treat a reaction, Chappell said.
“We want parents to feel safe and know that their kids will not go into anaphylactic shock,” she said. “Most families have been very supportive.”
For students in first through fifth grades, the school has a peanut-free zone where students who are allergic can sit without fear of coming into contact with the legumes.
“Kids that bring peanut snacks, we have wash their hands so they don’t take the oils onto the play structures,” Chappell said.
Kindergarteners are not allowed to have any form of peanuts, because they have a harder time understanding the importance of washing their hands and they share a lot of the same toys, Chappell said.
The new rules are to protect students with the most severe and rare form of peanut allergies, in which an affected person can have an allergic reaction just by sitting next to someone who is eating a peanut butter sandwich, Chappell said.
Indirect contact with a peanut product can have similar effects. For example, a student who touches a keyboard or swing set previously used by a person who had touched a peanut butter cookie could have a serious skin reaction.
“We provided a list of alternatives that parents can use, such as almond or cashew butter,” Chappell said.
The other elementary school in the district, San Lorenzo Valley Elementary School, does not have kids with peanut
Nationally, a growing number of school districts are implementing such protocols as a means of keeping students safe and their parents at ease.
According to the National Institute of Health, close to 2 million Americans are allergic to peanuts, and more than 4,000 U.S. schools have banned peanuts.
