But K.W. uses one type of insulin that is diluted, depending on his needs, and another type that is available without a prescription for his lunch dose, the lawsuit said. Ms. Watkins asked to verify every dose, so the staff agreed to text her photographs so she could confirm them.
Sometimes those images were blurry or were not sent at all, the lawsuit said. Once, in January 2018, a nurse sent her a message showing a syringe containing 10 units of the insulin solution, rather than the proper dose of one unit, it said. Ms. Watkins called the nurse, and “a possibly fatal medical emergency was averted,” the suit alleged.
Ms. Watkins, 36, who also has Type 1 diabetes, then asked that K.W. be allowed to use syringes prefilled by his parents at home or to allow his parents to go to the school to give him the medication. The requests were denied.
“They would not permit the home dilution of the insulin, which the parents have done for years,” Nate Crippes, a lawyer with the Disability Law Center who is representing the Watkins family, said on Thursday. “It’s a simple process.”
“Requiring a pharmacy to do it would add expense and time to the family, and no pharmacy, to my knowledge, would prefill the syringe, nor label it, something the district also suggested,” he said.
Just before the 2018-19 school year, when K.W. was to start second grade, there was no agreement on a health plan and the boy was placed on “home and hospital status,” meaning he was deemed too ill to attend school.
In December, the district said it would consider allowing the boy to come to school if the prefilled syringes were labeled by a pharmacy, so the district knew “exactly what is in the syringes” in case they were inadvertently given to another child, Ms. Andrews, the district lawyer, said in the email included as evidence with the lawsuit.
