How is it that a 4th grade public school teacher can get away with regularly using narcotics?

Whether or not she's doing narcotics doesn't really matter if she's got tenure -- it's almost impossible to fire a teacher after they get that. We had a teacher here who was so zonked on prescription drugs that she fell asleep in cl and had substitutes every other day. The parents yelled at the principal, but he said there was nothing he could do because she'd just call her lawyer. They transferred her to different grades, and now she just sits in an office at one of the schools and checks attendance and stuff because she can't be safely left in charge of a cl. Her meds were prescribed after she broke a hip, but she hasn't tried to improve. She's just waiting out her retirement.