Mandated Reporters

By Kira Rodriguez

Lesson four:

Conduct a daily health check on every child entering the classroom during drop-off. 

Ms. Mandy was scheduled to work that morning at 7 a.m., just like most mornings. She flicked on the light, tossing her bag and jacket onto the hook outside the door. A few toys weren’t in the right place, but the last few kids left in the daycare at closing time were moved into her room like every night. It is easier for one teacher to keep track of them that way. Most of the kids didn’t know their way around the four’s room, most being either too little or too old. Her classroom was the largest room in the daycare, except for the gym. The play and sleeping area was divided from the lunch and craft tables by a large archway with paper stones around it. The walls in the play area were a soothing baby blue, perfect for naptime, while mimicking the sunny sky when the kids needed to release their imaginations. Classroom tables sat in the middle of the connected yellow room, fake grass and paper rainforest animals lining the walls. They were learning about the rainforest that week.

Ms. Mandy watched as the first student ran up to the glass double doors of the daycare, leaning against the small archway that led into her classroom. Her aunt walked behind her, carrying her bookbag. Mia pressed the button that asked for them to be let in, reaching as high as she could. She was small for a four-year-old, but her mind would say something different.

“Are we learning about the rainforest this week?” Mia said, her face lighting up at the sight of the jaguar on the wall.

“We are! We will be talking about all the different animals that live there.”

“Yay! Oh, oh! Ms. Mandy, did you know there are,” she started, pausing to count on her fingers.

“There are thirty million plants and animals in the rainforest?”

“I know now. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome! I would show you, but I don’t have enough fingers.”

“Oh, that is okay,” Ms. Mandy said, bending down to Mia’s level.

She asked Mia to do a quick spin, looking in her eyes and then tracing every inch of her body, looking for a bruise, scratch, or mark of any kind.

“Where did you get this scratch?” She asked, holding Mia’s arm.

“My cat. He didn’t like it when I tried to hug him.”

Her shirt was covered in cat hair. She has talked about her cat, Jiggy, before. She was okay.

“She has been sneezing a little. Allergies, I think,” her aunt said as Ms. Mandy sent Mia off to play. 

“Alright. We will keep an eye on her.” Ms. Mandy smiled as Mia’s aunt left.

A few kids trickled in by the time Silas arrived. Mom had dropped him off, carrying his baby sister in her car seat. She seemed fine today. Silas kissed his sister goodbye and ran off to play with the other kids.

“Wait, young man. You know the rules.”

He came back and spun like Mia, like all the kids who entered her classroom every morning. He locked eyes with Ms. Mandy as he turned to face her. A large bruise sat underneath his eye. Ms. Mandy looked at Mom.

“He fell out of bed.”

He fell out of bed last week when there was a bruise on his forearm. He fell out of bed the week before, when there was a scratch on his inner thigh. 

Lesson five:

Be prepared to use “Elijah’s Law”.

Three-year-old Elijah Silvera died in 2017 from a severe reaction to dairy after being fed a grilled cheese sandwich. They knew he was allergic, knew that he could die. Ms. Mandy turned on the news a few days after he passed, watching his father weep, begging for something to be done so another family wouldn’t have to feel the pain he did. His fight worked. In 2019, Ms. Mandy, a forty-four-year-old daycare teacher, was happy to learn about the strict guidelines for preventing, recognizing, and responding to allergic reactions that New York state had signed into legislation that year. She only wished she had been taught sooner.

Ms. Mandy was twenty when she called 911, something she had never done, something she hoped to never do. She was working in the three-year-old classroom. A little girl, about to turn three next week, was brought in during naptime while Ms. Mandy was preparing the craft for when the children woke up. Lucy-Rose lay on her mat without being asked, unlike her friends, who sat awake, asking to play with toys in the book corner. They were told to go back to sleep, but they didn’t listen; they never listened. 

The lights were flicked on an hour later. The craft was laid out on the tables, ready for the kids after the naptime mess was cleaned up and the kids used the bathroom. Stations were set up around the room: the blue and yellow Fisher Price car ramp was set up in one corner, with cars for the group of four kids to shoot across the room; the kitchen set was pulled out of the corner, half of the food missing the Velcro that kept the two halves together; and the craft table, covered with paper, glue and balloons… balloons made of latex, balloons that Ms. Mandy didn’t know Lucy-Rose was allergic to. 

She fell, knocking over the kitchen set. Her hands were around her throat, hoping someone would notice that she couldn’t breathe, that her lips and eyes looked like balloons themselves. She hoped Ms. Mandy knew what to do, but she didn’t know; she didn’t know where the EpiPens were, how to keep the gasping child calm, and the crying, confused children away from her. She didn’t know to have her lie on her back, propping her up because she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know to elevate her legs to help with shock. She didn’t know CPR; she wasn’t required to know. In 1995, only one person on-site was required to know CPR. They came too late.

Ms. Mandy sat in her boss’s office, crushing the water bottle in her hands. The police said she did everything right. The daycare should’ve been better prepared. She didn’t believe them. She could’ve done more, done something different. You were there, they kept saying, she wasn’t alone. But that didn’t matter, not to her. She stared at the ground, questioning how she was going to explain to Lucy-Rose’s father that he would never hold his little princess again.

Ms. Mandy was transferred a few days later to the Little Oak Daycare Center in the Northtowns. She couldn’t look the kids in the eyes, knowing she couldn’t save their friend. She was only 20.