Parent says fired Cobb school nurse gave his 12-year-old son the wrong pill

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But one parent is still pushing for additional charges because he says L. Waggoner gave his 12-year-old son medication he wasn’t prescribed.

The 38-year-old nurse at Barber Middle School in Acworth was charged after administrators noticed students’ medications were missing, authorities said.

According to her arrest warrant, school police found her in possession of 209 pills, including Adderall, generic forms of Ritalin and Focalin, and Evekeo. The drugs were valued at about $1,500.

The prescription stimulants are commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, but people also use them recreationally.

One student’s father, who asked AJC.com not to name him, said Waggoner gave his son a pink and white pill that was not prescribed to him. The incident occurred on the same day the nurse called their home to say she ran out of the seventh grader’s medication, he said.

“My wife questioned her about it and she says, ‘Well, we dropped a couple of them,’” he said.

The parents said that concerned them because they counted their son’s pills during a meeting with school employees at the beginning of the year and knew exactly how many he had.

When they asked their son if he’d ever seen Waggoner drop his medication on the floor, he told them no.

That evening, the student’s father sent an email to Principal Tia Amlett, Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale and the district’s nursing supervisor, Melanie Bales.

“If the school is out of medication and the one he took today was not his normal medication, then he is missing (six) pills because of no school on Labor Day,” the email reads. “We are very concerned about what the nurse gave him without our knowledge and permission.”

The day after emailing school officials with his concerns, the father said he was told that Bales was with police counting students’ pills in the Barber clinic.

Two days later, an arrest warrant was issued for the school nurse, according to a letter Amlett sent to parents.

Waggoner faces a single felony charge of theft by taking, but any additional charges in the case would have to come from the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office, a spokesman for the school system said Thursday.

In a statement, the district said it has reached out to the families affected by the missing medication and is in the process of reimbursing them.

Waggoner was released several hours after her arrest on a $15,000 bond, Cobb jail records show.