Parents whose children attend St. Stephen Catholic School to fight decision
By Tandem 15/12/2007

St. Stephen Catholic School should protect in every possible way the health of children suffering from severe food allergies. This is the message sent by the parents of six pupils attending this Woodbridge school, following cancellation of a program that had teachers checking students’ lunchboxes for dangerous foods. “The program was activated in 2002,” said Mary Marano, mother of Julia, “and it gave excellent results for five years. Then they decided to cancel it.”

Until last year, teachers checked lunchboxes to make sure that no food ingredients like nuts or eggs, dangerous for kids with food allergies, were allowed in school. “Our school has 26 children who suffer from such allergies,” she continued. “When the program was cancelled we protested with the principal, the superintendent and the Board. However, nothing was done.”

Another precaution comple-mented the routine lunchbox checks: all parents were asked to write down the ingredients used for their children’s lunch. This was another effective measure that “prevented possible acci-dents.”

These parents have decided to denounce the position of the school authorities to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

They can rely on the support of Maurice Brenner, an expert with a long experience of battles in defence of human rights. The school remarked that the decision to cancel the program was taken in order to “fall in line with the other schools.”

“Paradoxically,” commented Mary Marano, “other schools were activating similar pro-grams, using St. Stephen as a model. I want to underscore that this is not a funding issue, because the program had no cost for the school administration. All we ask for is that our children’s rights be upheld.”