Lip Balm School Ban contested by Young Girl

A prepubescent Grace Karaffa was not allowed to use a chap stick for her dry and bleeding lips. But instead of turning the other cheek she decided to fight back. 

11-year-old Grace, who is in fifth grade at the Stuarts Draft Elementary School, began efforts at signing on many people for a petition that contested the decision taken by the school board. 

And this small wonder had the ability to present her case before the Augusta County Board in all its intricate details. Talk about being way ahead of your age group! 

She had always been forbidden the use of this very necessary element in her life in this school of hers. She couldn’t employ it inside the classroom nor could she use it in the environment outside. 

“Grace was told in the second grade she couldn’t use ChapStick, but we didn’t look into why,” Grace father David Karaffa told FoxNews. “When Grace asked if she could use ChapStick while out in the cold last year, she was told again, ‘No, you’re not allowed.'”

But now she had had enough and had decided to question and dispute the stupid and petty rule against lip balm. Her dad corroborated her claims that her lips had started bleeding in the classroom. 

“They told her at the time that some kids might be allergic to ChapStick,” David said.

The poor helpless girl had to excuse herself time after time to go to the washroom to wipe the blood from her lips. Things had come to an impasse. 

Finally, when she got old enough to speak her own mind, she made the crucial decision to present the case before the school board. 

“She said, ‘Dad, I want to get rid of this ChapStick ban thing.’ I said, ‘Okay, you have to speak to your teacher and the principal, who both advised she write a letter to the Augusta County school board,” he said.

The school authorities even said that others might be allergic to her lip balm. It was said that the application of the lip balm by Grace might serve as a diversion to others in the classroom. 

But Grace said that her bleeding lips were more of a curiosity than a simple Chap Stick. Her petition had over 300 signatures on it and many of them were from her girl scouts group. 

“She said, ‘I think it would be more distracting to have bleeding lips while I’m doing my work,'” her father said. “That ended that line of questioning.”

The school board reviewed the petition and the whole debate and has said that it will revise the rules and regulations concerning lip balm. 

The main concerns were regarding the spread of infectious diseases via the careless sharing of these Chap Sticks. 

“Health officials were concerned that the sharing of items like Chapstick, lip gloss and other lip balm products among elementary-aged students might well have been contributing to a serious infectious disease outbreak,” the statement of the Augusta County Schools superintendent’s office read.

“The school division chose to control the use of these products not because of a concern that they are inherently dangerous, but out of a concern that they /4/have been a means for the transmission of disease.”

“ChapStick has been used safely by millions of consumers for more than one hundred years,” Pfizer, the manufacturer of the lip balm, said in a statement sent to FoxNews. 

Grace had the grace to send a thank you note to each person who signed her petition and she also sent them a Chap Stick as a souvenir. 

Meanwhile BLAMtastic, a consumer products company based in Atlanta, GA, decided to help out Grace after hearing about the petition.

BLAMtastic has not only signed the petition but they company has also sent free lip balm to the principal “so that every student can have their own,” according to NBC12. The company also send free lip balms for anyone who signed the petition.