NORTH CLARION, Minnesota — North Clarion Elementary has temporarily replaced cafeteria milk with sealed bottles from another supplier after teachers found 14 pupils writing in one another's handwriting following lunch. County health staff reported no sign of foodborne illness, and the school remains open on its normal schedule.
The first examples appeared Thursday during a fourth-grade mathematics lesson. Teacher Alyssa Nordin noticed that three worksheets were written in styles she associated with other pupils: a wide left slant, unusually square numerals and lowercase letters joined by long horizontal strokes. The answers belonged to the children holding the pencils, but the handwriting did not.
By the end of the day, teachers had collected 27 assignments from grades three through five with similar changes. In several cases, staff could identify the pupil whose ordinary handwriting had appeared. Two children exchanged styles with each other. Others wrote like classmates in different rooms and had not seen their work that day.
Principal Owen Vaal asked teachers to use printed activities Friday while the school reviewed pens, paper and classroom routines. Handwriting returned to normal before dismissal Thursday, then changed again for 11 pupils within an hour of Friday lunch. No change was observed in speech, balance, reading or knowledge of personal information.
The affected pupils had eaten different entrees but all selected half-pint cartons of low-fat milk from the same delivery. Cafeteria staff set the remaining cartons aside and served water at the second lunch period. No pupil reported an unusual taste or odor. The dairy said the lot passed temperature and packaging checks and has drawn no complaint from other schools.
Handwriting depends on learned motor patterns and can change with fatigue, attention, posture and imitation, pediatric neurologist Mira Scholl said. Children who discuss an unusual example may unconsciously reproduce it. Scholl said a precise exchange of several habits, including spacing and habitual errors, would be more difficult to attribute to suggestion alone.
The district compared the papers with writing samples already kept in classroom portfolios. One third-grader formed the letter 'k' with a loop used consistently by a fifth-grader she had not met. The third-grader also misspelled 'because' in the older pupil's usual way, though she spelled it correctly on a morning worksheet.
Parents were notified Friday that the school was reviewing a possible cafeteria exposure. Three pupils were examined by their physicians at family request, and no neurological or gastrointestinal problem was identified. The county did not issue a recall and advised the district to retain samples of the milk while routine testing is completed.
The school served bottled milk from another dairy Monday. Teachers collected short handwriting samples before lunch and at 30-minute intervals afterward. Thirteen children wrote normally throughout the day. One fourth-grader, Leda Orm, continued to use a tall, compressed script that staff could not match to any pupil's portfolio.
Nordin recognized the script Tuesday on the cafeteria's handwritten milk count. It belonged to kitchen employee Ruth Ivers, who records the daily number of cartons opened and returned. Ivers does not work in the classroom and said she had never written on Leda's assignments or spoken with her beyond the serving line.
During Tuesday lunch, Ivers wrote the milk total while Nordin watched, then paused and began again. The second total appeared in Leda's ordinary rounded handwriting. At the same table, Leda signed her name in Ivers's compressed script. Both returned to their usual handwriting before the trays were cleared.