Wake County school leaders move toward plan to put opioid-reversing Naloxone in schools
RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Wake County Schools are moving closer to a plan to place Naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, in schools across the county.
The medication can reverse the effect of opioids, and the school board’s policy committee recommends training several people in each school on how to use it.
Barb Walsh knows Naloxone can save lives.
“My daughter Sophia died from fentanyl poisoning from a water bottle,” explained the founder of Fentanyl Victims Network of North Carolina. “Her life could’ve been saved if Naloxone had been administered. It was not.”
Walsh said her daughter had no idea the bottle of water she picked up had fentanyl in it. She isn’t the only one who has accidentally come in contact with the deadly drug.
Walsh noted that pills can be laced with fentanyl and people who take them are unaware.
“A student will think they need to self-medicate with something for anxiety or ADHD, and take this pill. In that pill is deadly fentanyl,” he said.
At Tuesday’s Wake County Public School System Policy Committee meeting, board member Toshiba Rice said her 25-year-old son died under similar circumstances.
“He didn’t know he was taking a fake pill,” she said.
While neither of those incidents took place in schools, both Walsh and Rice worry a similar situation could happen at school.
“The fact of the matter is sometimes students will take a pill they think is OK from someone else and it’s really not,” noted Rice.
Right now, school resource officers in Wake County carry Naloxone, but the policy committee is recommending training staff members at every school to recognize signs and symptoms of an opioid-related emergency and to administer the medication if they believe it’s needed.
In a previous meeting, school board staff presented statewide data showing that Narcan or Naloxone was used 21 times on school grounds across North Carolina during the 2022-2023 school year. There were no incidents in Wake County public schools.
“Maybe it hasn’t hit in our schools yet, but better to be safe than sorry,” said board member, Cheryl Caulfield.
Barb Walsh added that she sees the medication much like an EpiPen or an AED. During Tuesday’s policy committee meeting, school staffers told board members the policy they wrote is based on the district’s EpiPen policy.
Walsh, who urged the board to put a Naloxone policy in place during a previous school board meeting, compared the drug to a fire extinguisher.
“We don’t plan on having a fire in our kitchen,” she said. “But we have a fire extinguisher — same thing.”
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