With the situation going on in Ennis, Texas where an entire high school is now being tested for TB (tuberculosis) because a teacher chose to go to work while contagious and endanger children rather than do the responsible thing and stay home, something needs to be done to protect children in the future.
It's not like anyone who is experiencing the flu-like symptoms of TB are conducive to a healthy classroom for our children. Do you really believe that a teacher should be teaching your children when they are coughing, with fever, night sweats, and chills, isn't hungry and is fatigued? Many of us would assume we had the flu, as the teacher likely did, but is it alright even to expose them to flu?
In this instance hundreds of kids and adults who work at the school, as well as their families, are being tested. With hundreds more to test, 128 have already tested positive for Latent TB or inactive TB that will just sit in their systems, and 10 have tested positive for Active TB. These children, and possibly their families, will now face a serious lung disease because a teacher made the wrong call.
This is something that should not be allowed to happen again. What if the next time the teacher has Ebola or SARS? Are you willing to bet the life of your child on whether the teacher will make the right call then?
This is something the School Boards across Texas or the State Legislature needs to address. When it comes to our childrens' lives there needs to be protections in place. The teachers need to be told that the lives of children are valued in Texas and if they are sick they are not to come to work and spread their germs around. They either need to stay home until they are no longer sick, and contagious, or seek medical care before the decision is made to enter a classroom.
There is no sense in sitting back and allowing anyone to endanger our children unnecessarily, and while I fully support the US Constitution and everyone's rights as an individual, I do not support anyone's right to endanger others for any reason, nor did our Founding Fathers. No one right was supposed to supersede another, and no one's rights supersede the rights of anyone else.
So, it falls to us to put a fool-proof method in place to protect our children from another incident like this, with TB or something worse. The health of our children is worth fighting for and making a law for, that will not take anyone's rights, and not cost the taxpayers a thing—all it needs to say is that if you are a teacher you can not go to work while sick unless you have seen a doctor who did not find you contagious and a danger to the health and well-being of the children.
Here's an oddity for you—look up teachers infections diseases and children and you will find instructions for how teachers should deal with infections students and how parents should tell the teacher when a student has an infectious disease but what is missing is policy for teachers who are infectious. We need one, and sooner rather than later
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