If diabetic Devin Jackson slips into a coma at school, it will likely be her fourth-grade teacher, not a trained nurse or hastily summoned paramedic, who administers the injection that saves her life.
Schools are on the front line to meet their needs.
These laws are bringing about a true paradigm shift in terms of the weight people can bring to the issue of individual rights. Teachers can find themselves responsible not just for feeding and for toilet trips, but for performing urinary catheterizations and for suctioning tracheotomy tubes. The NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, the two largest teachers unions, strongly oppose teachers tending to student health needs. She says a fellow teacher was threatened with firing when she wouldn't change a male sixth-grader's diaper. This is a very hot issue.