Stanley police investigating missing medication at Gaston County charter school
.png "The Stanley Police Department says it’s investigating a report about missing medication at Community Charter School in Gaston County.")
Police say they’re investigating an alleged theft of controlled substances at a Gaston County charter school after a parent said his son’s medication went missing.
Daniel Whitehouse told The Charlotte Observer dozens of his seventh-grade son’s Adderall pills, meant to be administered to him at Community Charter School, have gone missing in recent months. The school initially was dismissive about his concerns, Whitehouse said.
“When we got the administration involved they kind of beat around the bush about it and they didn’t know how to handle it, and it kind of led us to believe they didn’t want to handle it,” Whitehouse said. “Honestly, they kind of are treating us like we’re an inconvenience to them through our verbal interactions, like we’re causing problems or something like that.”
Administrators at Community Charter School declined to comment, citing the sensitive and confidential nature of the situation. A letter written by the school and given to Whitehouse did admit his son’s medication had been “compromised.”
The Stanley Police Department confirmed there is an ongoing investigation into the embezzlement of controlled substances. A letter Whitehouse provided to the Observer states the school resource officer filed a police report. WSOC-TV first reported on the missing medication.
Community Charter School is located on the northern end of Stanley, a town of about 4,000 people between Lake Norman and Gastonia.
Whitehouse said he knew something was wrong when the school nurse asked for a refill on his son’s ADHD medication days before the previous batch was meant to run out. With the Thanksgiving holidays and long weekend meaning even more days off school, he and his wife thought it was much too early to warrant a refill on the prescription, he said. The family also provided a surplus of pills each month, Whitehouse said.
“My wife goes up to school and demands the records be pulled and discovered that over the course of this school term a total of 31 pills had been unaccounted for, which is like the equivalent of one whole refill,” he said.
Whitehouse questions whether the school has been properly storing the medication according to state regulations, keeping consistent medicine logs and counting the pills each day.
The Charlotte Observer has submitted a public records request to the charter school for personnel information allowed to be released under state law.
Whitehouse’s son has a 504 plan through The Americans with Disabilites Act for his attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia that allows for specific accommodations in school. During this process, Whitehouse said, the school hasn’t been accommodating to his son’s learning disabilities.
For a short period, his son couldn’t take his medication because the pills ran out and insurance wouldn’t cover the pharmacy refilling the prescription so early — one reason the family needed to file a police report. To help his son cope, Whitehouse sent him to school with fidget toys, crossword puzzles and color-by-number worksheets to use in between classes, which he ended up getting in trouble for, he said.
“They weren’t even holding themselves accountable to follow basic medication storage and how to dispense that,” Whitehouse said. “So that really eroded a lot of trust in us.”
This story was originally published December 13, 2024 at 8:15 AM with the headline "Stanley police investigating missing medication at Gaston County charter school."
