The error is:   you assume someone's permission must be sought to order products, use them or plan classroom experiments.  Technically, there are administrators and principles, but they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about chemicals, acceptable practice or standards of safety.  All they want is to be left alone by the teachers who they incorrectly assume know what they are doing.  This is an odd assumption considering it is the administrators themselves who also are responsible for the failure to provide even the most basic required OSHA training for any of their staff.  Most schools I'm called into where there have been accidents or problems have NEVER had hazcom or lab safety training.

Your eloquent answer doesn't factor in the firm conviction that all regulations are an evil devised by liberals and should be repealed.  And that science should wake up and face the fact that the world is only a few thousand years old and will end soon.  Remember, this was a religious school.  The school official interviewed by the TV station said they were praying for the victims, which probably will even satisfy the parents of the injured students.

And whatever I say here goes DOUBLE for Texas (except for Austin which everyone knows is not really in Texas).

So grade and high school teachers in most states, and more particularly in the Southern states, feel they have the freedom to plan lessons and materials without interference from anyone.  That's the really big picture and there is absolutely no "fix" for it.  You can fight ignorance with facts.  But facts are powerless in the face of religious and political conviction.

Even when lack of simple inventory regulations resulted in blowing up an entire town in Texas and killing half of their emergency responders, not one damn thing has changed.  And it won't.