Nine ODs in One Loudoun High School and Parents Were the Last to Know

by Kerry Dougherty

What is it with Loudoun County school officials? They’re strangely fond of keeping secrets. They don’t like parents. And they never seem to learn from their mistakes.

In 2021 they hid incidents of sexual assaults from parents.

Last month they hid a fentanyl epidemic at Park View High School from parents for more than two weeks.

In fact, it took former Virginia Beach School Superintendent Aaron Spence, who now heads the Loudoun division, 20 days to inform parents that students at Park View were overdosing on fentanyl left and right.

Astonishing.

This guy seems to have absolutely no sense of urgency when it comes to the safety of students.

At last count, nine students in that one school OD’d last month. According to the sheriff’s department four of the students overdosed in school and five overdosed off campus. Three students required Narcan to reverse the effects of the deadly drug and two required CPR to be revived.

Investigators believe kids have been taking counterfeit oxycodone that has been laced with fentanyl. The drug comes in the form of round blue pills emblazoned with an “M.”

That information might have been handy for parents to have as soon as the deadly drugs started to move. Instead, school officials were mum for almost three weeks.

When parents were finally informed of the overdoses on Halloween, many were livid that they weren’t notified immediately after the first kid nearly died.

On the “Kerry and Mike Show” Thursday morning, Gov. Glenn Youngkin talked about the executive order he’d signed Wednesday evening that orders school divisions to inform parents of drug overdoses within 24 hours.

“This is exactly what I’ve been talking about,” the governor explained. ”Parents need to know about these things immediately so they can speak to their children and gain information.’’

“We cannot allow administrators to sit on this information.… Here we are again with Loudoun County not sharing important information with parents and I’m not going to allow this to happen…that is why I issued the executive order last night.”

Excellent move, but it’s mindboggling that such an order was even necessary.

At least one Loudoun School Board member sided with the governor:

“Why was there a delay until Oct. 31 in letting the community know?” Loudoun County School Board member Tiffany Polifko asked NBC Channel 4.

“We cannot regain trust that’s been lost in this school system over the last several years and improve transparency if we don’t tell parents what’s going on,” she said.

Yep, it looks like Loudoun County has done it again. They’ve handed Republicans a powerful campaign issue in the closing days of an important Virginia election. Youngkin and his running mates were catapulted into office in 2021 in large part on the issue of parental rights.

Those on the left who owe their souls to the teachers unions and who want to shut parents out of the education system should be in deep trouble on Tuesday.

Fingers crossed.

Republished with permission from Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited. 


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Comments

5 responses to “Nine ODs in One Loudoun High School and Parents Were the Last to Know”

  1. James Kiser Avatar
    James Kiser

    Ah but all those early voters can’t change their votes.

  2. Kathleen Smith Avatar
    Kathleen Smith

    Unfortunately, the school’s personnel more than likely contacted the central office, who more than likely contacted attorneys, who more than likely said, be careful you will get sued for violating the privacy act. Educators are caught between a rock and a hard place. The executive order makes it better, but some parent of a student who did overdose will take it to court to prove that the executive order is unconstitutional.

    I am glad the order is in place. But it will probably be overturned. This is the yo yo world we live in right now.

  3. It takes a village of school administrators to hide children’s’ activities from their parents.

  4. killerhertz Avatar
    killerhertz

    What we really need to do is keep funding this insanity and keep our kids enrolled – boomercon 2023

  5. Stanwood Avatar

    FWIW, when I first read these headlines I imagined a bunch of dead kids but fortunately all survived. As a parent of high schoolers, I would expect (and have received) a text message or email notification after student deaths. I’m not sure they have notified us of overdoses that did not result in death but I wish that they would. For starters, you want to get any other kids that recently purchased an illicit substance to think twice before they roll the dice and ingest.

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