Legal Rights of Children with Epilepsy in School & Child Care

Administration of Emergency Antiepileptic Medication in Schools
for the student and his or her family, friends and classmates; they may also
result in treatment confusion or errors if emergency room staff do not have
access to the student’s medication regimen, illness if the student is exposed to
sick people in the emergency room, and lost time from school. Additionally, 911
calls can turn a chronic, manageable, everyday part of life into an emergency,
resulting in expensive and unnecessary intervention. If families do not want 911
to be contacted whenever their child has a seizure, they and their advocates
should try to work with school district personnel to educate them and develop an
individualized approach that makes sense for their child.
7.8Q: What if school staff administer emergency antiepileptic medication but
insist on also calling 911 when the student has a seizure?
A: One reason emergency medications were developed was to avoid the need to
take people to the emergency room because of lengthy seizures or clusters of
seizures. Some school districts insist, however, on calling 911 whenever they
administer emergency medications. As discussed in Answer 7.7, families and
their advocates can try to work with school staff to change this policy if they do
not want 911 to be called; otherwise, it will be necessary for a parent to come to
school to release the emergency response staff so that they do not transport the
student to the emergency room. 49
7.9Q: Are staff required to administer emergency antiepileptic medication to a
student with epilepsy who experiences status epilepticus on the school bus?
A: Yes, school staff must administer emergency antiepileptic medication if the
administration of the medication is part of the student’s IEP and transportation is
included in his or her IEP as a related service. This means that someone
qualified to administer the medication needs to be on the bus with the student. In
practical terms, it may be difficult to administer a medication such as diazepam
on a school bus, since there is not a lot of space, the floor of the bus is dirty,
there is no privacy, and the bus may not be able to pull over anywhere to stop
moving. However, at least one school district has found an effective means of
addressing this situation. See Forest Area Community Schools, 2005-115b,
Michigan State Educational Agency (May 23, 2006). In this hearing decision,
the parents sought an aide to travel with the student on the bus. The hearing
officer found that an aide was unnecessary because the district had taken steps to
ensure the student’s safety and privacy. The bus route between home and school
was short, and the district had a bus driver who was trained to administer the
49 Although it has no precedential value, a Minnesota state department of education administrative
complaint letter has addressed this issue in the case of a medically fragile child with epilepsy who gets sick
easily and whose parent was concerned about the cost of repeated visits to the emergency room. The
department found that although the district might want to include calls to 911 in the student’s
individualized health plan, failing to do so would not bar the district from calling 911 if it believed the
situation were an emergency. Anoka-Hennepin Independent School District #011, Minnesota State
Educational Agency, 1828 (March 17, 2003), 106 LRP 19152 (online only).
103