The DeKalb County Board of Education is being asked to ensure that each school has its own nurse by adding a new position.
Dee Anna Reynolds, Coordinated School Health Coordinator, addressed the Board with this concern Thursday night during the regular monthly meeting.
The school system currently employs four school nurses, Chandra Adcock, Kim Turner, Christie Driver, and Joanie Williams. All are registered nurses. Each school has its own nurse except for the DeKalb Middle School and DeKalb County High School which have to share a nurse. Director Mark Willoughby said the state provides funding for one school nurse per three thousand students. Any other nurses must be funded locally.
Because of the growing student population and children with chronic conditions including diabetes, Reynolds said another nurse is needed. “County wide our nurses had 20,181 clinic visits for 2013-14. In August we had almost 2,000,” said Reynolds.
Due to the demand, Reynolds said her assistant, Cindy Childers, an LPN has been lending a hand but she can’t take on the responsibility full time because of her duties with the Coordinated School Health Program. “Covering the Middle School/ High School is almost impossible from 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. so Cindy has been leaving every day to go over for a couple of hours to cover the Middle School/ High School and some days she stays longer because there are other situations to deal with. Cindy is part time so she can’t do that every day. On days when she does not do that, the nurse at Smithville Elementary School goes over there. So we’re leaving Smithville Elementary School open and even for a few hours that worries us a little bit because we have students diagnosed with seizure disorders which require the emergency medication Diastat if a seizure occurs at school and only a nurse can administer Diastat,” said Reynolds.
School Nurse Chandra Adcock also stressed the need for another nurse. “As a parent, taxpayer, and employee I’m concerned that we as a county only choose to provide partial nursing services to an entire population of children. We have multiple students in our schools every day with chronic health conditions. Just to name a few, we have people with asthma, diabetes, seizure disorders, cardiac disease, life threatening allergies, blood disorders, cystic fibrosis, and many more. On a daily basis that one nurse is assigned to care for students in two of the largest schools in the county serving approximately 1,400 students,” she said.
Meanwhile three parents, Darlene Evans, Ashley Bryant, and Glenda Davis, who all have children with diabetes also addressed the board asking them to find the funds to hire another school nurse to help meet the medical needs of their children and others in the school system.
The school budget does not provide funding for a new school nurse position. A budget amendment, authorized by the county commission, would be required to pay for one this year.
Board Chairman W.J. (Dub) Evins, III called for a workshop on Monday, September 22 at 6:00 p.m. at the Board of Education building to address the matter. “Asking for a budget amendment, probably isn’t going to happen and if it does it’s probably going to take a while. My main object right now is to see if we can come up with a plan to start making sure these issues are addressed. This (workshop) will give us some time between now and the next board meeting to come up a plan,” he said.
Evins has asked Reynolds and nurses to meet with the board at this workshop to provide input.
In the meantime, Director Willoughby said he will assign a substitute nurse to meet the needs. ” I think it’s extremely serious. Unless you (school board) tell me different, I’m going to start putting a sub nurse in there every day until we can get somebody we can classify as full time. We have more of a need this year than what we have had in the past,” he said.
Reynolds said there are six nurses available as substitutes including four registered nurses and two licensed practical nurses.