Before the nation erupted into a wave of unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, L.A. County released guidelines on reopening K-12 schools and LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner said if campuses open in the fall, they are likely to operate in a hybrid model.
Despite expectations that campus health professionals play a key role in reopening, many schools simply don’t have one.
Districts have long operated with a dearth of full-time school nurses and counselors. It’s a shortage that could come to a head when students, their families and staff need a medical professional most.
L.A. Unified employed a total of 469 nurses in the 2019-20 academic year, and has either signed contracts or anticipates hiring 40 additional ones for the next year. That means more than 65% of nurses were part-time, working at several schools each week.
Education experts say students, especially low-income or students from other vulnerable groups, are sure to need extra emotional supports after 5 months being outside classrooms on top of concerns about coronavirus spread. Custodians, counselors and other supports are also in short supply.
The shortage was one of many grievances highlighted in last year’s teachers strike, and the picture is similar to other financially-strapped districts across the state. According to the California Healthline, the ratio of students to school nurses across the state in 2014 was 2,784 to 1.
Per the county school reopening guidelines, a framework that was compiled with input from superintendents and other education leaders, nurses should be taking a leading roll in assessing the health of students and training campus staff on health procedures.
What nurses are expected to do per those guidelines:
- Attend all initial and trial IEPs (Independent Education Program) and assess special needs students within the first 30 days of returning to school
- Serve as point person for health-related decisions, and collaborate with administrators as part of school opening and health planning team
- Review any health information on COVID-19 to share with staff, students and families.
- Conduct health surveillance activities, screenings, and case management of students with chronic health conditions
- Provide training to other office staff on COVID-19, public health guidelines, health office practices and use of PPE prior to reopening
- Meet with teachers and staff to address staff concerns, review health and safety procedures and review guidelines for when to send students to the health office
If there’s no nurse? Provide training for frontline office staff. Reopening decisions will be made at the local district level, and county officials have said the framework is merely a tool.
Myrna Fein is a full-time nurse at Pacoima middle school. Long before the coronavirus pandemic forced schools to shutter, she began to isolate students and monitor signs of symptoms for the virus.
Whenever the school reopens, she’ll likely go back to doing the same work and more by taking the lead on all things public health at her campus. But in a school district that employed 159 full time nurses out of more than 900 district and charter schools last year, she warns there aren’t enough people like her to reopen schools in a pandemic.
“It’s definitely concerning, because the nurse on campus is the sole medical professional. The teachers are there to teach and everybody else is from the world of education,” said Myrna Fein, the school nurse in Pacoima.
“A lot gets placed on front office staff now because we don’t have enough nurses, we don’t have counselors. I think they’re great, but this particular issue watching out for covid at their school seems way beyond their job qualifications.”
LA County Superintendent of Schools Debra Duardo said a national nursing shortage compounds the funding problem.
“It’s definitely another challenge, unfortunately even prior to this pandemic,” Duardo said. “I don’t think districts have the funding in place to hire a nurse for every campus and even if they did I don’t think they could do it.”
A spokesperson for the California Charter Schools Association said charter schools have worked to address the nursing shortage by “contracting out for specific nursing services, training staff on emergency response including CPR certification, and incentivizing staff to be trained as community emergency responders.”
"do it" - Google News
June 07, 2020 at 08:00PM
https://ift.tt/30iQzmi
Whenever schools reopen, they are likely to do it with a shortage of nurses and other support staff - LA Daily News
"do it" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2zLpFrJ
https://ift.tt/3feNbO7
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Whenever schools reopen, they are likely to do it with a shortage of nurses and other support staff - LA Daily News"
Post a Comment