Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 9, 2005

You can't get a nurse in a Buffalo school...

(Scroll down for an update.)

Buffalo school officials look to local and state sources to finance full-time nurses who were lost in county budget cuts

By PETER SIMON
News Staff Reporter

Clare McKenna's life was on the line last Friday when she suffered a severe asthma attack at Buffalo's City Honors School.

Because the 15-year-old freshman was too weak to walk, friends carried her to the school clinic.

But the door was locked. Because of county budget cuts, there was no nurse on duty. School officials called an ambulance while Clare, losing precious time, was in the main office, gasping for air.

Clare recovered in the hospital and returned to school this week. But what should have been a routine 30-minute treatment and recovery period became a five-hour ordeal.

Clare's experience has school officials and parents openly asking this frightening question: Will it take the death of a child or teacher to break the logjam over school nurses?

"This was truly a life-and-death situation," said Catherine Battaglia, the City Honors principal. "I hate to think of what could have happened."

The school nursing issue in Buffalo is reaching a crucial stage for the following reasons:

District officials are seeking to include about $3 million in next year's school budget for nursing services that would roughly equal what the county provided before the cutbacks in March. A task force recently recommended that the district, despite its continuing budget problems, find $5 million to provide a full-time nurse at every city school. That plan is too ambitious, said Gary Crosby, chief financial officer.

"We're crawling," he said. "We've got to walk first. Then maybe we can run."

Bills have been introduced in the State Legislature that would allow Buffalo and other big cities in New York to administer school nursing programs through the Board of Cooperative Education Services and be eligible for reimbursement of about 80 percent of the cost.

Concerned parents, teachers and students - including Clare McKenna - are planning to attend tonight's Board of Education meeting to lobby for school nurses.

Clare, who plays varsity softball, basketball and volleyball at City Honors, will tell board members about last week's asthma attack.

"I need immediate attention when I have an attack," she said Tuesday. "If I don't get that oxygen, I could pass out. Then what are they going to do?"

Since the county eliminated its school nursing program in March, 16 nurses have been scrambling to provide part-time coverage at 60 city schools. Most school districts finance their own nurses for schools.

But the city school nurses are now paid through outside agencies and with $110,000 in emergency funding from the city and school district.

A few Buffalo schools have full-time nurses to look after medically fragile students, but others have nurses as little as 30 minutes a day.

The Work Group on Student Health Services, made up of district officials and community representatives, recently issued a report recommending that the school system allocate up to $5 million next school year to assign a nurse to every school, as is largely the case in other local school districts.

During the first half of this school year, Buffalo nurses evaluated 17,287 student complaints, sent 3,707 students home and referred 1,086 to family physicians. They also administered an estimated 550 doses of medication each school day.

"The need for comprehensive school health services in Buffalo is undeniable," the report said.

Board of Education members, who will hear that message again tonight, hardly disagree.

"These are critical services," said Jack Coyle, chairman of the board's finance committee. "They should be provided at every building."

Funding is the problem. The county financed school nurses in Buffalo for the last 50 years, and some board members are reluctant to let it off the hook. The district itself continues to grapple with deep fiscal problems, and funding nurses could require cutbacks in other services. The state may provide relief, but that remains uncertain.

Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, said Albany should step up.

"We (the district) don't have the money," Rumore said. "To dump something else on us is horrendous."

Even when the county funded school nurses in Buffalo, coverage was less than complete.

City Honors, for example, had a nurse three days a week at most. Now a nurse is there for just 45 minutes to an hour a day to administer medications.

That leaves Clare McKenna with a disturbingly makeshift method for dealing with asthma attacks.

She tracks down her friends, goes to the office and, with the help of a school secretary, hooks up her nebulizer, a device that administers a oxygen plus medication to restore normal breathing. If all that doesn't happen within about 10 minutes, Clare can begin hyperventilating and require more extensive treatment.

"They told me there's no nurse, so you're going to have to find a way to deal with this," she said. "I can't control my asthma so it happens when there's a nurse here."

Follow-up story...

Skeleton staff of 13 nurses stretched thin covering Buffalo's system

By MARK SOMMER
News Staff Reporter
6/11/05

School nurse Mary Talty-Brady feels terrible telling sick children she can't help them.

But Talty-Brady often has no choice, since she has to cover four schools during her five-hour workday, some for as little as 45 minutes.

"Recently, I had a child - fever, chills, unable to get a hold of a parent - and I had to write a note back to the teacher (saying), "I'm sorry I have to leave.'

"That little girl was really ill. It really hurt me to tell her she had to go back to class."

Erie County budget cuts have reduced the ranks of the formerly county-funded school nurses to 13, down from the equivalent of 50 full-time employees, according to Assunta Ventresca, director of health-related services for Buffalo Public Schools.

Most school districts pay and provide their own school nurses.

Buffalo school officials are trying to devise a plan to pay for more school nurses to cover 60 elementary and middle schools. Full-time clinics in a small number of schools help some of the city's high-risk students.

The absence of nurses has forced teachers, school clerks, administrators and others to fill in, even when it means illegally administering medications.

"I do the medications - and I am someone who would call my sister in Virginia before I would give my own kids inhalers. I'm not at all medical," said Mary Lou Reil, Houghton Academy's assistant principal.

School medical supplies are also running low, with no funds set aside to procure more. That situation has forced nurses to move supplies from one building to another.

"The situation is very bad," said Ventresca. "There is an expectation that, when your child is in school, they are going to be safe, and if they're injured or have a health problem, someone will be there for them.

"In most of the schools, no one is there anymore."

On a recent morning at School 38, there was a pregnant girl who felt dizzy, a boy who accidentally shut a door on his finger, a girl with pink eye and another girl with asthma who needed an inhaler.

"You never know what's going to show up at your door," said Maria Shilling, the school nurse.

Or, if a nurse will even be there.

Such was the case recently when an asthma attack caused Clare McKenna of City Honors School to be taken by ambulance to a hospital because there was no school nurse. What may have been a routine treatment became a medical emergency.

District officials said Wednesday they are seeking to include $3.2 million in next year's budget to reinstate nursing services to what they were before the cuts.

The long-term plan, district officials said, is to have a full-time nurse in every city school, something that hasn't been the case in years. It depends on the success of state legislation that would permit nurses to be hired through the Board of Cooperative Education Services, allowing the district to receive 80 percent reimbursement from the state.

The Work Group on Student Health Services, made up of health and other community representatives, advocates $5 million to fund full-time nurses in every city school.

Until the end of this school year, though, nurses say they no longer have the time to check if children are up-to-date with their immunizations, or to conduct screenings for children without a doctor.

They say their schedules prevent them from forging a familiarity with the children and their medical histories. Talty-Brady began her hour's visit to Houghton Academy on a recent morning by administering medicine to three students going on a trip to Six Flags Darien Lake. Next were two boys who were feeling sick and had vomited. They were examined and their mothers contacted.

A girl came in from gym class complaining of shortness of breath due to asthma. Talty-Brady showed her how to use her inhaler properly.

A girl who had had a bout of head lice returned to be checked, emerging with a clean bill of health.

Talty-Brady said there will often be children waiting for her. That was the case at her next stop, Lorraine Academy, where she took care of a boy who has autism and needed his medication. Also waiting was a girl with a fever who complained of dizziness and whose allergies had flared up. Talty-Brady called the girl's mother to take her home.

Not all sick children are able to be picked up, Talty-Brady said. Since many of the kids she sees live in poverty, their families don't always have transportation, or even working phones. That means they have to return to the classroom or sit in the office.

The children's ranks inside the office grow when a girl comes in with a bandaged leg, and a boy has a puffed-up wrist, possibly from a bug bite.

"Imagine what goes on when I'm not here," Talty-Brady said.

Talty-Brady worries about the schoolchildren with diabetes - whom she tests each day for glucose levels - having a reaction when there's no nurse around. "People don't understand how sick some of the kids are in the public schools," said Talty-Brady, noting that many children don't have primary physicians. "What we're doing now is putting a small Band-Aid on a large wound."