Multiple elementary school teachers and teacher aides have been placed under criminal investigation in the town of Spring, Texas. They are accused of administering adult dosage sleep patches to kids in their classrooms and telling them that they won “sleep stickers.” Parents started noticing that something was off when their kids were suddenly unable to fall asleep at night.

One child brought one of the knockout stickers home to show her mother.

“She said, ‘It is a sleeping sticker,” Lucy Luviano said. “I asked, ‘Where did you get this?’ And she said, ‘My teacher gives it to me for sleeping time.”

Enraged, the mother brought the sleep aid patch to Northgate Crossing Elementary School to demand answers. She also threatened the school with a police investigation. District policy explicitly states that school employees are not allowed to give kids prescription or nonprescription drugs, herbal substances, steroids, or other medications.

Instead of contacting all the parents to notify them of what had happened, the school district waited two weeks before issuing a public statement. The statement said that two teachers and two teacher aides had been removed from the classroom on September 24th. The four individuals were placed on administrative leave, pending a criminal investigation by the Spring ISD Police Department.

Luviano texted other parents at the school before the notice went out. Another mom named Najla Abdullah asked her four-year-old if he had been given any of the “stickers.”

“Yes, mommy. I got a special sticker,” he said, before describing the sleep aid patch to her. He then showed it to her since it was still attached to his hand. Both parents reported that their kids were unable to fall asleep at night on the days the knockout drugs were given to them.

This stunt isn’t something new to public schools and daycares. In December 2023, a preschool teacher in California was fired for slapping sleep aid patches on their students. Daycares in Missouri and Tennessee were shut down in 2022 when it was discovered that the caregivers were administering melatonin to the kids.

It’s believed that the children in Spring were administered Original Sleep Zpatches, which are formulated for adults only. The ingredients include a mixture of “Sensoril Ashwagandha, Melatonin, Hops, Valerian Root” and more. The website that sells the sleep aid patches specifically says they’re not intended for children under 18.

The CDC notes that in recent years, childhood poisonings with melatonin have been dramatically increasing. In 2020, there were more than 52,000 kids who suffered from melatonin poisoning. Most were under the age of 5 and they experienced gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, or central nervous system problems. Five children had to be placed on ventilators because of melatonin poisoning that year and two children under the age of 2 died.  The CDC warns that people assume melatonin is safe for kids because it is an over-the-counter sleep aid.

The school district has not publicly released the names of the teachers and aides involved. School officials do admit that this was a violation of district policy. Many parents are now wondering how long their children were being given adult sleep aid drugs. They also want to know if the teachers gave their kids anything else.

While melatonin is a legal substance regulated by the FDA, administering it to a child without the parent’s permission could result in charges of child endangerment. There’s also a good chance that the teachers and aides will all be fired if they’re found guilty of doping the children in their classrooms to make them sleep.