A group of parents in Texas were sickened to learn their children's preschool teachers were allegedly giving their kids "sleepy stickers" to "keep them quiet."
Lisa Luviano said her 4-year-old daughter, Layne, told her about a sticker her teachers were putting on her arm that made her fall asleep at school. Layne snuck the sticker home and that's when her mother discovered the "sleepy stickers," meant for adults, contained melatonin and other ingredients.
Her parents knew something was wrong after school started.
"At two o'clock in the morning, I'm hearing a noise in her room, and she's still up," Layne's dad told KHOU-TV.
Luviano contacted school administrators, but she told KHOU they didn't do anything about it in terms of letting other parents know what was happening, so she contacted them one-by-one and encouraged them to talk to their kids. One of the parents she spoke with was Melissa Gilford.
"I showed it to my 4-year-old and she said, 'Yes, that's the sleepy sticker,'" Gilford told KHOU.
Najala Abdullah, whose son is also a preschooler at the school, said he started crying more than usual and stopped eating his lunch when he started school.
"They're giving them drugs to make them sleep to keep them quiet," Abdullah said.
Parents met with school administrators on Tuesday and were reassured that multiple teachers who might have been responsible for administering the stickers had been put on leave and police were investigating the matter.
"Upon learning of the allegation the teachers in that classroom were immediately removed and placed on administrative leave," school officials said in a statement released Wednesday. "As a precautionary measure, two paraprofessionals in that classroom have also been placed on administrative leave pending the ongoing investigation..."
