Lasalle County Parents Upset Over Science Fair Project

Seems as though some parents are angry after an older student led an experiment that asked their children to open child-proof medicine bottles.

Showing some kindergarten and first grade students how to defeat a child-proof lid on a medicine bottle? Why, whatever could go wrong?

Parents of the kids who attend Leland Elementary School in LaSalle County, Illinois seem to think that plenty could go wrong, and they're not happy about how this came about.

WGN TV News:

Parents were not told in advance about Friday’s project at Leland Elementary School in LaSalle County. On Sunday, the principal and Leland School District Superintendent Jodi Moore sent parents a letter saying that a junior high school student had worked with some kindergartners and first graders “to gather data for a science fair project.”

“In this project the student collected data on how fast the Kindergarten and first grade students could open different medicine bottles, and at some points demonstrated to the students how to open the containers,” the letter said. “This happened without sending proper permission to parents of the students who participated in the activity.”

But Moore later told the Chicago Tribune that the older student “may have” shown some students how to open a bottle. She said the older student was not acting maliciously.

The superintendent went on to say that she gets how parents could be surprised to find that their child can open a child-proof medicine bottle, but that one of the purposes of the experiment was to show that "child-proof" doesn't always mean...well...child proof.

Matt Skorupski, whose daughter is a kindergarten student at Leland, said several parents learned of the science experiment through a video he shared on a Facebook group that showed his daughter opening a pill bottle.

Anthony Mayer, whose daughter is in kindergarten, said he saw the video before finding the school’s letter in his inbox.

Now, “I feel scared to let my kid out of my sight for a second,” Mayer said.

So, how easy is it for a kid to defeat the child-proof lids?