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Parent claims SA charter school student with low blood sugar prevented from leaving class to see nurse

Her classmates at Great Hearts Western Hills Upper School argued with the teacher to try to get her help as a special monitor showed her blood sugar dropping.

SAN ANTONIO — New allegations are surfacing from parents whose children attend a San Antonio charter school.

Great Hearts Western Hills Upper School has been the subject of two news stories by KENS 5 in recent months.

On Wednesday, another parent emailed KENS 5 hoping to shed light on a serious medical situation at that same school.

The father, whose daughter is a Type 1 diabetic, shared details about the traumatic situation with KENS 5 under the condition he remain anonymous.

"I wanted to bring change, positive change," he explained.

At any given moment, the father can track his daughter's blood sugar.

"She wears a CGM which is a continuous glucose monitor. With Bluetooth technology, we're able to see at all times what her sugar is," he said.

Should his daughter's blood sugar dip to dangerously low levels, the family prepared specific instructions for the school which are detailed in a 504 plan.

"It states that in in a severe hypoglycemia that the parent should be contacted," the father explained.

The father says October 31, while his daughter was in class, the nurse called for her by sending another student.

The nurse can also track his daughter's blood sugar levels and knew treatment was needed.

However, the daughter said the teacher wouldn't allow her to leave until she finished her work.

"Other students who are familiar with my daughter's condition started saying, 'Miss, you need to let her go to the nurse. She needs to go to the nurse'. [The teacher] told them that it didn't concern them," the father explained. "Time went on, my daughter tried to get up and go. The teacher stopped what she was doing and went to the door so that my daughter could not leave."

The CDC says severe low blood sugar is below 54 mg/dL, triggering symptoms like difficulty walking or seeing and seizures.

"When that incident happened, what was your daughter's blood sugar level?" we asked the father.

He replied, "65 and it was going down."

He says his daughter eventually got treated after another student ran to the nurse for help. 

The father says the school never called to alert him of the incident, which violates his daughter's 504 plan. He learned about the situation from his daughter the night after it happened, and said other Great Hearts Western Hills families corroborated the story.

The next morning, he and his wife met with administrators and the teacher to figure out what went wrong.

"The teacher has allowed my daughter to go to the nurse in the past to be treated for low sugars. So the fact that she said she didn't know had me kind of questioning her integrity," said the father. "[An administrator] said that the kids should not have taken over the class... She actually compared it to the French Revolution. I said it's interesting because the French Revolution is actually one of the most violent revolutions of all time, and there was no violence that occurred in the classroom."

The father emailed the school board and Great Hearts Texas administrators. The superintendent, he says, replied in a timely manner.

"They asked that I give the headmaster an opportunity to kind of resolve these issues," the father explained.

The father says a big reason he keeps his child at Great Hearts Western Hills is because of the care and compassion of the school nurse. His hope is the nurse isn't reprimanded for this incident.

At the end of the day, he says he just wants accountability. He's meeting with the Great Hearts Upper School headmaster Friday to discuss better communication measures among administrators and training for teachers on 504 plans.

He's also filed a complaint with the TEA.

A spokesperson for Great Hearts Texas said they won't comment on this situation, but wrote in an email to KENS 5: "We are aware of the incident and will work with the parent involved."

"I hope that [Friday] after we meet that we're able to come to an agreement where something like this never happens because I don't want to have to think about how much worse it could have gone," the father added.

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