Yucaipa School District to pay $15.75 million for student asthma death

The family of a Yucaipa middle school student who died on campus after suffering an asthma attack received a $15.75 million settlement from the school district.

Attorneys argued the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District was negligent and did not use best practices when it comes to documented student medical conditions.

On Oct. 31, 2019, Mesa View Middle School student, Adilene Carrasco,13, complained she was not feeling well while at school. She told her teacher and was permitted to walk from an athletic field back to the classroom for her inhaler. After using it, Carrasco said she still did not feel good. She headed to the nurse's office and by the time she got there, she was in full respiratory distress, lost consciousness, and went into cardiac arrest before paramedics arrived. Carrasco died nine days later.

"You know we send our kids to school and they are supposed to give them back to us, and I didn't get her back," said Edith Sepulveda, Carrasco's mother.

Attorneys argued Carrasco's teacher was negligent and ignored district safety policies by not learning of Carrasco's medical conditions and following best practices for those listed conditions in her student profile. Carrasco had a known history of asthma attacks at school, including two documented attacks in the months leading up to her death – neither of which was known by the teacher prior to the day of the incident because she had not reviewed Carrasco's profile at the start of the semester.  

"Adilene's death was a preventable tragedy that resonates and reaffirms the fear of every parent and caregiver of an asthmatic child," said the family's attorney Robert Glassman. "Asthma is a leading cause of school absenteeism and the number one reason school-age children go the emergency room. More must be done to ensure that every district adopts and implements asthma management practices so that no other family suffers the loss of a child due to school district negligence."

Doctors testified in the lawsuit that Carrasco's final asthma attack was exasperated by the fact that she was permitted to walk the distances, equating to 13 football fields, to get her inhaler, back to the athletic field, then to the nurses office.

As a condition of the settlement, the school district is required to implement changes to its policies and procedures including creating a staff checklist to acknowledge review of students with identified medical conditions, retain a pulmonologist to train staff on oversight of asthmatic students, implement a partnership with the Arrowhead Regional Medical Center's "Breathmobile" Program at no cost to the students, adopt the California School Board Association's Administrative Regulation regarding Asthma Management at the recommendation of the District's Superintendent and create a commemoration of Adilene Carrasco at Mesa View Middle School.