Lawsuit Filed Against Toledo Public Schools
By mother of 8th grader hospitalized after teachers ignore pleas for help on class trip 500 miles from home
Toledo, Ohio – October 28, 2013 – A lawsuit was filed today and assigned to the Honorable Judge Gary Cook in the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas on behalf of a mother alleging that Toledo Public Schools and the Beverly Elementary teachers chaperoning her daughter’s Spring 2013 school trip to Washington, DC failed to properly attend to the child’s medical needs, causing her to become dangerously dehydrated and require significant hospitalization.
Despite Sarah Kroggel giving express, written authorization to TPS and the Beverly teachers to provide medical treatment for her 14-year-old daughter on her behalf, those in charge of the then-8th-grader refused to get the girl the medical attention she desperately needed.
TPS teachers’ complete lack of common sense led to the girl’s hospitalization for extreme dehydration, gastritis and nausea.
But it was the baffling decision not to inform the girl’s parents that she was ill that really upset Ms. Kroggel and led to the lawsuit.
Since she had heard nothing otherwise, for four days Ms. Kroggel thought that her daughter was safely enjoying every Midwest student’s rite of passage into high school – visiting the Nation’s capital. Instead, when she went to pick up her daughter off the bus at the end of the trip, she was shocked at her condition.
The girl looked gaunt, ashen and could hardly stand on her own two feet, and Ms. Kroggel immediately took her to the emergency room where it was quickly determined that she would need to be hospitalized for a week.
It was soon discovered that while in Washington, the student’s pleas to lie down and rest, to not have to hurry through tours in 90 degree weather, to not join her classmates for dinner and to forgo a cruise on the Potomac were denied by her teachers. The teachers were aware that the girl had been repeatedly vomiting in her hotel room, on the bus, during outings and even during a theater performance, but instead of calling her mother or taking her to a hospital, she was given a trash bag to use and told to sit next to the bathroom while on the bus.
The girl’s doctors believe that had she received the proper medical attention immediately following the onset of her symptoms in Washington, she would not have become so dangerously dehydrated and therefore not have needed to be admitted for a week to the hospital when back in Toledo.
Attorney Charles Boyk is urging all parents to communicate with their children’s schools to make sure that this does not happen to someone else.
“The purpose of the lawsuit is to seek fair compensation for the extremely careless conduct of TPS and the Beverly teachers in charge on the trip that landed a young girl in the hospital,” Chuck Boyk said. “Instead of being able to take away fond memories of her 8th grade tour of DC, Ms. Kroggel’s daughter will be forced to remember that she could not trust and depend on her teachers to allow her to speak with her own mother.
”
The lawsuit’s purpose is also to inform parents so that they will insist that their own children’s schools be held accountable for their actions and establish and enforce protocol that allows for full communication between parents, teachers and the administration, in and out of the classroom.
“Teachers must be properly trained to err on the side of caution when caring for children and provide full disclosure to parents at all times, which was clearly not the case in this situation,” Chuck Boyk said.
The mission of Charles E. Boyk Law Offices, LLC is to help those injured by the negligence of others, while at the same time focusing on educating the community in order to prevent similar situations. Headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, Charles Boyk Law Offices has six locations to serve those in need of legal representation and we offer complimentary case evaluations to anyone living in or near northwest Ohio.
###
For more information on this case or to schedule an interview, contact us today.
