School Food Allergy Policy

[MSWR0319]

If your school has a food allergy policy, would you mind posting the link to it? I am working with my school to develop a policy after they violated DS's 504 and caused him a three day reaction. I'd like to see other school's policies so I can share them and make sure ours includes as much as possible.

Thanks!

[JBaxter]

Nut allergic kids eat at a separate table at lunch peanut butter and nuts are permitted in the lunch room. If there is a nut allergic child in the class room no nuts/ nut containing products are permitted for snacks in the room. Thats it. Birthday treats ( cup cake , cookies , icecream) are permitted and the allergic child provides their own treat. Thats it.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Nuts allowed only in cafeteria. There is no separate seating in the cafeteria. For class parties, we have a list of allergies (we have a huge list in ds2’s class) and plan snacks accordingly.


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[georgiegirl]

Our school is similar. Handbook recommends kids being nut-free lunches. Allergy kiddos sit with hot lunch kids at lunch (since it’s nut free). Classrooms are nut free if there’s a nut allergy kiddo in there. So no nut snacks in those rooms.


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[ett]

Sharing of food is not allowed at our elementary schools. Kids are not allowed to bring in food treats for birthdays, no food/candy allowed when exchanging valentines, etc. For events involving food (i.e. as part of the immigration unit, kids broke up into different groups to cook food from different countries), they provided the list of all ingredients being used. Kids do have snacks (brought in by themselves) in their rooms. If there is a nut allergic kid in the class, then no nut containing snacks are allowed.

There is a nut free table at the cafeteria. School lunches are nut free but kids can bring in nut items for lunch from home. Sitting at the nut free table is not required. DS2 who has a nut allergy sat there during his early elementary years and then sat at the regular table during upper elementary. (The school nurse encourages this.) The guidance counselor runs lunch groups occasionally and when DS2 goes to those, only kids with nut free lunches can be in his group that day.

[scrooks]

Nut free table at lunch. New this year- only non food birthday treats. Before class parties a list of alllergies sent out so food is appropriate.

There have been talks of big changes at our school/ in our district. We have a relatively new rather vocal allergy parents “club”. There is talk of no food at parties and eventually no food at any school functions... whether or not they are during school hours or not. At our school there are 3 before school breakfast that would then be on the chopping block (mornings with moms, donuts with dudes and silver friends day) plus I am assuming the school picinic etc. I don’t care about the class parties but I think the out of school activities are beloved and I would be sad to see them go.

[Dayzy]

Our school is a nut-free table at lunch, dd's class we are asked to not send hard boiled eggs or egg salad because the teacher is allergic. There are no treats for birthday parties and for class parties like Halloween the class parent brings in crafts to do and each child brings their own special snack from home.

[BunnyBee]

Our school (small private) uses the CDC guidelines. I was volunteering in the office and hole punched copies. https://www.foodallergy.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/cdc-guidelines.pdf

[doberbrat]

Sharing of food is not allowed at our elementary schools. Kids are not allowed to bring in food treats for birthdays, no food/candy allowed when exchanging valentines, etc. For events involving food (i.e. as part of the immigration unit, kids broke up into different groups to cook food from different countries), they provided the list of all ingredients being used. Kids do have snacks (brought in by themselves) in their rooms. If there is a nut allergic kid in the class, then no nut containing snacks are allowed.

There is a nut free table at the cafeteria. School lunches are nut free but kids can bring in nut items for lunch from home. Sitting at the nut free table is not required. DS2 who has a nut allergy sat there during his early elementary years and then sat at the regular table during upper elementary. (The school nurse encourages this.) The guidance counselor runs lunch groups occasionally and when DS2 goes to those, only kids with nut free lunches can be in his group that day.

Ours is very similar. Except no food sharing at all period. If there is a nut allergic child, then the kids line up at the door for snack time and the teacher checks each food item. any homemade treats must be expressly 'declared' by the parent to be nut free and not processed in a facility that has nuts. Kids w/nut products are either told to keep it for lunch or made to eat in the hallway outside the classroom depending on the teacher, class makeup etc/ Only school lunches are permitted at the nutfree table.

[Snow mom]

Our school has similar rules to those already posted. Each grade has at least one nut free classroom (any classroom where there is a nut allergy + they make sure their is a nut free class for each grade in case their is a transfer mid-year that needs a nut free classroom). Which classrooms are nut free tends to change from year to year so I think they really do assign classrooms to the nut allergy kids just like any other kid and then those classrooms are nut free for the year. DD has two kids with nut allergies in her grade and they are not together so two of the four classrooms are nut free. If you are in a nut free class you can't have nut containing snacks and can't bring anything that isn't packaged to class parties/ birthday celebrations. Our cafeteria has nut free tables where kids with nut allergies can eat with a friend who is buying hot lunch. DD told me the boy who has a peanut allergy in her class eats at the class table (gr 4) so I guess at least in the older grades this is optional. She does bring PB sandwiches and this is considered fine even though he is eating at the same table.

[AngB]

Nut allergic kids eat at a separate table at lunch peanut butter and nuts are permitted in the lunch room. If there is a nut allergic child in the class room no nuts/ nut containing products are permitted for snacks in the room. Thats it. Birthday treats ( cup cake , cookies , icecream) are permitted and the allergic child provides their own treat. Thats it.

Similar. This was ours last year, except if there was a child with an allergy in the room, birthday treats had to be nut free and approved by the nurse. (This wasn't a big deal, we brought in cupcakes and the nurse approved them on our way to bring them to the classroom.) This year they made it slightly more strict: birthday treats have to be purchased from cafeteria (and therefore won't contain nuts.)

[MontrealMum]

We’re the outlier. Our entire board is nut-free. No nuts in any school, ever.


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[specialp]

We’re the outlier. Our entire board is nut-free. No nuts in any school, ever.


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Not there yet, but close. Only tree nut products allowed in the school have to be eaten in the nut-section (2 tables) in the cafeteria. Not at all in classrooms or for snacks. I've never seen anyone sit at the nut table so the effect is people opt not to bring any.

[moosemama]

I'm in Canada and our school board is completely nut-free. I believe this is true across the country (I have friends and relatives from coast to coast and their school boards are also all nut-free). All our camps, daycare, afterschool programs, indoor gyms etc. are also nut-free. We are not allowed to bring snacks in for birthdays. When there are class parties (like the Halloween parties last week), all food must be nut-free. I feel (based on threads I've read here and other sites) that we must have many more nut-free snack/treat options in Canada. Perhaps because of our anaphylaxis laws? https://foodallergycanada.ca/resources/national-school-policies/

ETA - was posting at the same time as MontrealMum, who is also in Canada.

[Momit]

-Classrooms are nut free
-There is a separate nut free table in the cafeteria
-No sharing food
-Allergy child is always in the teacher’s group on field trips
-No birthday treats, Valentines with candy etc. may be given out at school

[LBW]

This might be helpful:
https://www.nj.gov/education/students/safety/health/services/allergies.pdf

Not my district, but this seems failry comprehensive:
https://www.somsd.k12.nj.us/cms/lib/NJ01001050/Centricity/Domain/539/R5331%20Management%20of%20Life-Threatening%20Allergies%20-%205-25-2018.pdf

I love the idea of a "nut table" instead of a "nut-free table" and I also think schools should stop allowing food for parties, Valentine's, etc. It's just not needed.

[vonfirmath]

In elementary schools: No sharing food at lunch, at all.

In individual classrooms, you have to obey all the allergy rules (My son's class the last few years was nut free (Tree nuts too), Sunflower-free (sunflower oil is a real issue avoiding we discovered -- but because of the sunflower allergy they didn't have sunbutter sandwiches in the cafeteria and went to cheese sandwiches instead) and one more I don't remember (It never really came up). We didn't have to worry about the allergies for lunch. But we did for snacks and the few parties with food that happened. All food brought in needed to be purchased from a store with ingredient lists.

[MontrealMum]

I'm in Canada and our school board is completely nut-free. I believe this is true across the country (I have friends and relatives from coast to coast and their school boards are also all nut-free). All our camps, daycare, afterschool programs, indoor gyms etc. are also nut-free. We are not allowed to bring snacks in for birthdays. When there are class parties (like the Halloween parties last week), all food must be nut-free. I feel (based on threads I've read here and other sites) that we must have many more nut-free snack/treat options in Canada. Perhaps because of our anaphylaxis laws? https://foodallergycanada.ca/resources/national-school-policies/

ETA - was posting at the same time as MontrealMum, who is also in Canada.

I think this is much more common here in Canada. Maybe because our food labeling is better? Which is something I learned about here! Though I will say that one of the local French boards has recently done away with the nut ban. There was a lot of outrage here.

[TwinFoxes]

Nut allergic kids eat at a separate table at lunch peanut butter and nuts are permitted in the lunch room. If there is a nut allergic child in the class room no nuts/ nut containing products are permitted for snacks in the room. Thats it. Birthday treats ( cup cake , cookies , icecream) are permitted and the allergic child provides their own treat. Thats it.

This is pretty much how it is at our school. There was a brouhaha at our school with lots of wild accusations being thrown about and I looked up our county's policy and it was surprisingly vague.

[♥ms.pacman♥]

Nut allergic kids eat at a separate table at lunch peanut butter and nuts are permitted in the lunch room. If there is a nut allergic child in the class room no nuts/ nut containing products are permitted for snacks in the room. Thats it. Birthday treats ( cup cake , cookies , icecream) are permitted and the allergic child provides their own treat. Thats it.

this is how our school is too. kids are allowed to pack nut products in their lunches. nothing is said about not sharing food. i think the only restrictions are with snacks, because they are eaten in the classroom.

kids are allowed to bring whtaever they want for birthdays etc, as long as its store-bought so they have ingredient list.