Round Lake Middle School in Crisis: Six Students Hospitalized After THC Gummies Found on Campus

There is a rhythm to the parking lot at Round Lake Middle School on North Lotus Drive. Parents leave. Buses arrive. By the time the building opens at 7:15, children with backpacks have left through the front doors, and the roughly 788 students in the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades settle into the routine commotion of a school day. That’s how Wednesday, May 6 began. That was not how it remained.

The Greater Round Lake Fire Protection District arrived at the school at 8:50 a.m. due to a reported overdose. An ambulance transported two students to nearby hospitals. The majority of schools would have handled that as a crisis—a bad morning, a challenging circumstance, something to look into and let families know about. It was just the first call at Round Lake Middle School. The school resource police officer called the Fox Lake Fire Protection District for a third ambulance at around ten in the morning. The hospital was visited by another student. At 11:10 a.m., two additional ambulances were dispatched, one from each district, and two additional students were taken away. Six students had been admitted to the hospital over the course of about two and a half hours by midday.

Six students “required medical intervention” after appearing to consume THC gummies on campus, according to a statement released by Round Lake Area Schools Community Unit School District 116 on Wednesday afternoon. In stable condition, all six were transported to hospitals. The students were transported as a precaution because they were feeling sick, according to Greater Round Lake Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Charley Mitchell, who described their injuries as non-life-threatening. As far as they go, those details are comforting. What they fail to address is the question that usually follows an event such as this one: how and by whom did THC gummies enter a middle school?

Eric Schmidtke, the chief of Round Lake Heights Police, declined to provide more information on Wednesday, citing student privacy laws. This is both a legitimate legal stance and, at this particular time, a very disappointing one. The school district declared that it was conducting an investigation in collaboration with the police. That inquiry is still in progress. Ambulances from several fire departments were visible on school property over the course of several hours, and at least one student who appeared alert was loaded into an ambulance while the school day went on around him. It is already evident that the situation developed gradually and in a way that was sufficiently visible to the public. Officials reported that there was no disruption to school operations. Depending on your point of view, that may or may not be comforting.

As this story progresses, it seems to fit into a larger, unsettling pattern. THC-infused edibles, especially gummies, are frequently indistinguishable from their non-intoxicating counterparts. They are easily concealed and attractive to young people due to their bright packaging and candy-like appearance. These products have become more prevalent in schools as cannabis legalization has spread across the country, and school districts are still figuring out how to react. This issue is not unique to Round Lake Middle School. It probably won’t be the final one.

The Wildcats have thirteen sports, a multilingual education program, and a Project Lead The Way curriculum designed to cater to a diverse student body. The school is located in a suburban area of Lake County where local identity is relatively quiet and Round Lake Heights news rarely makes it to Chicago-area television. It did this week. It’s difficult not to feel some weight in that—a school striving to be exactly what it’s meant to be, disrupted by something that entered through a door that no one was paying enough attention to.