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Parents furious after Tequila drink gets shared among their Kindergarten children
Parents are outraged after a young girl from a kindergarten school in Michigan reportedly brought a premixed bottle of Tequila into class and shared it with her classmates.
According to Local 4 News the young kindergarten student who attends Grand River Academy in Livonia, was found with a small plastic bottle of pre-mixed José Cuervo Tequila and had poured it into small paper cups for fellow kindergartners during snack time.
Following the incident, the school immediately contacted the parents of the five students that were involved to explain what had happened, however, each of them was livid.
Parent Alexis Smith, who got a call from her 5 year old daughter’s school on the morning of 14 April, said: “So many thoughts (were) running through my mind like … what if it was open before the girl brought it to school? How much was it?”
“I asked her, like, ‘Is my daughter OK,’” said Smith. “The teacher said ‘she’s right here, and she looks okay’. And then I said, ‘OK, well, how much did she drink?’” The school, reportedly, couldn’t give Smith a definite answer.
Smith added: “My daughter takes medicine. First off, no kid should be drinking…anything could have happened. It’s so heartbreaking. I feel like her first year of kindergarten was already cut short because of Covid, and situations like this just make it worse.”
Later that day, the principal sent out a letter to the community regarding the incident and the school shared a statement with local news regarding the event.
“We understand our parents’ fears and frustrations. A student did bring one pre-mixed, single-serve alcoholic beverage that was marketed as adult lemonade to school and share it with four classmates,” said school spokeswoman Leah Nixon, explaining: “While we try to keep an eye on everything our students bring to school, that’s simply not possible. It’s unfortunate that these types of adult beverages can be easily mistaken for child-friendly drinks.”
Staff members at the school, “quickly noticed the drink and addressed the situation” by contacting “medical professionals at poison control and calling the parents of the children involved,” Nixon added.
Parent Dominique Zanders revealed that her 5-year-old daughter claimed she was “woozy” and “dizzy” after indulging in “four or five sips” of the Tequila.
“That made me flip out,” Zanders said. “Are you serious? My daughter, a 5-year-old in kindergarten, had liquor? And the teacher didn’t see this?”
A representative for the Allendale, Michigan, college said it is “reviewing the situation.”
The university’s Charter Schools Office “will be working with the school’s Board of Directors to ensure that appropriate disciplinary action is taken, effective parent communication occurs, and policies and procedures are reviewed and amended, if necessary,” Grand Valley State University said in a statement.
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