Black Helicopters? Fear the Bureaucrats!

Another story of the stupidity of people.

It was raining when her children left for school on Tuesday, so Jesse Michener did not slather them in sunscreen, even though she knew they'd be outdoors for field day later that afternoon. But the sun came out around noon and, when the kids came home, two of them were so severely sunburned that they had to go to the hospital.

Tacoma Public School district spokesman Dan Voelpel told Yahoo! Shine that the school district's sunscreen policy -- which forbids teachers from applying sunscreen to students, and only allows students to apply it to their own bodies if they have a doctor's note authorizing it -- is based on a statewide law.

While Michener says that she takes full responsibility for not making them put on sunscreen before bringing them to school that day -- none of her kids have ever come home from school with sunburns before, she notes. She also points out that teachers had other options besides breaking the law: They could have sent the girls indoors when they noticed the burns getting bad, or called Michener and asked her to come to school and put sunscreen on them herself. (The FDA suggests that sunscreen be reapplied every two hours.)

"Something as simple as a sun hat might seem to bypass the prescription issue to some extent," she wrote. "Alas, hats are not allowed at school, even on field day."

Yes, the mother should have applied it before the girls left, although even if she had, she is not there to reapply it and ensure it is done correctly.

But it is annoying to see an adult abdicate common sense for the sake of a "policy."  The school says that the policy is "really to protect other students who could be exposed to various medications that they could be allergic to."  Which is really to say, "We want to avoid all and any liability, because in the rare case where a child might have an allergy to Coppertone of which the parents failed to warn, we also want to make sure that we won't be sued for not having our teachers time the children's exposure to the sun and not apply sunscreen."  

Which means even if you dress your kid in clothing designed to limit exposure to UV, the teachers just might sit by while they drop from heat exposure.

Sad thing is that rather implement common sense - have plenty of water, send a note home to the parents asking them to provide sunscreen, allowing the children rest periods in the shade, and removing a child from activities if it appears they are getting too much exposure - the next step wold likely be to eliminate field day altogether.