Kern High School District officials held a meeting Tuesday evening at North High School to address recent fentanyl overdoses on the North High campus, as well as similar problems happening at other Kern County schools.
As the epidemic continues, district parents say they want more action and transparency from the district. The meeting at North High became heated as parents voiced their frustration with the district after multiple overdoses have happened on school grounds.
Jennifer Essex is one of those concerned parents whose son has been affected by fentanyl, and she says the school is not doing enough to save children’s lives.
“The fact of the matter is that my son was in the middle of a classroom here overdosing, and nobody came to his rescue,” said Essex. “My son could have lost his life under that desk.”
Essex went on to say that the school sent out a notice three days after her son’s overdose saying that nothing out of the ordinary was happening at the school, even though there were three additional overdoses at the school soon after her son’s.
Essex is not alone. Shelly Ross also attended the meeting in support of other parents because she knows what it’s like to lose a child to this drug.
“My son Cameron died of a fentanyl overdose,” said Ross. “He had a drug problem. He also had it in high school. He died at 22.”
Ross adds that it was only two years ago in 2020 when her son died, and she says if more isn’t done, it could happen to another parent.
“I’m a grandmother. This isn’t going to go away. I don’t have a student here at North High, but i want to support these poor parents that are trying to fight it,” Ross said. “We all need to come together because our children are dying.”
Parents within KHSD say they want more communication and transparency from the district. Marc Balch, principal of North High School, says the school is doing what it can.
“We try to be responsive when we start to hear that there are issues that parents are concerned about,” Balch said. “The first time that we became aware of the issues on social media was on Thursday, and we tried to send a response out on Thursday that addressed those issues. I gave the best information that I had at the time on Thursday afternoon specific to the use of opioids. We released a new statement on Friday.”
Scott Odlin, Director of Instruction for KHSD, says the district is continuing to find new ways to protect students.
“We’re working on what resources we have available and we’re always looking to get good suggestions,” said Odlin. “We have a safety team that meets, and we’re always looking to adjust anything we can in terms of student safety on our campuses and resources available to help those with substance abuse.”
Sheree Gilmore, a parent within the district, says this is a real problem and that more needs to be done to combat it. When students have overdosed at North High, school staff were not the ones to administer Narcan on campus, waiting instead for first responders to do it.
“Fentanyl is real and it’s killing our kids, and there’s been over 10 ambulance rides out of this school with ODs,” said Gilmore. “Not one person at this school administered Narcan to any of them. Not one teacher walked any of these kids that were OD-ing up to the office, and not one teacher followed up to make sure their child was okay.”
The district says every school is equipped with Narcan. Narcan, generic name naloxone, is an emergency drug treatment administered by spraying it up the nose of someone having an opioid overdose with life-saving results. The district says that Narcan has been administered to students 5 times throughout the district so far this year.
