[HM2Viking]

Growing numbers of uninsured children have made it harder for educators to focus on classroom achievement without first addressing the medical needs of their students who lack health insurance or dental coverage.
Instead of notifying parents when their children are ill, school officials increasingly must help find health care, arrange transportation for sick children and often advise beleaguered parents about the health consequences of their inaction.
Schools that don't accept the extra responsibility can lose those students to prolonged absences that jeopardize their academic advancement.
In the nation's capital, school psychologist Chandrai Jackson-Saunders got a psychiatrist to provide free Ritalin to a fourth-grade boy with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The boy had become a behavioral problem and missed more than 50 days of school when he could no longer get the drug after his mother's insurance expired.
In New Prairie, Wis., school social workers got the local Lions Club to provide corrective eyewear for a nearsighted fifth-grader whose parents had no insurance. Nancy Wells, a former school nurse in Dover, N.H., once got her own dentist to perform a free root canal on an uninsured student with an infected, abscessed tooth.
...

The number of uninsured children age 18 and younger grew by 710,000 to a total of 9.4 million in 2006, according to new research by the Urban Institute. Seventy percent of these newly uninsured children came from families earning more than twice the federal poverty level — that's $41,300 for a family of four.
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/...ory/21509.html accessed today.

[CRNA2007]

Wow, and I always thought it was the crappy public education system that rewards failure. I thought this was the school nurse's responsibility? Once again more scare mongering from the left.

Originally Posted by HM2Viking

Growing numbers of uninsured children have made it harder for educators to focus on classroom achievement without first addressing the medical needs of their students who lack health insurance or dental coverage.
Instead of notifying parents when their children are ill, school officials increasingly must help find health care, arrange transportation for sick children and often advise beleaguered parents about the health consequences of their inaction.
Schools that don't accept the extra responsibility can lose those students to prolonged absences that jeopardize their academic advancement.
In the nation's capital, school psychologist Chandrai Jackson-Saunders got a psychiatrist to provide free Ritalin to a fourth-grade boy with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The boy had become a behavioral problem and missed more than 50 days of school when he could no longer get the drug after his mother's insurance expired.
In New Prairie, Wis., school social workers got the local Lions Club to provide corrective eyewear for a nearsighted fifth-grader whose parents had no insurance. Nancy Wells, a former school nurse in Dover, N.H., once got her own dentist to perform a free root canal on an uninsured student with an infected, abscessed tooth.
...

The number of uninsured children age 18 and younger grew by 710,000 to a total of 9.4 million in 2006, according to new research by the Urban Institute. Seventy percent of these newly uninsured children came from families earning more than twice the federal poverty level — that's $41,300 for a family of four.
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/...ory/21509.html accessed today.

[VivaLasViejas]

What school nurses? In our district, there is one---count 'em, ONE---nurse for over 5,000 school kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. Don't you think it's rather unrealistic to lay this kind of responsibility at the feet of ONE nurse?

[HM2Viking]

The article is speaking to how health care access disparities act to interefere with the ability of children to effectively learn in school.

These disparities are forcing schools to devise stopgap measures for access to care in order to help students stay in school.

One school was driven to open a clinic staffed by a NP in order to help their students stay in school.

[VivaLasViejas]

Actually, my response was to CRNA2007. My point was, there are way too few school nurses, period, thanks to budget cuts and---at least, in our school district---some mixed-up priorities, such as putting in a new teachers' lounge and spiffing up the school's front lobby at a time when some students can't even get BOOKS for each class..........let alone see a nurse when they need medical care at school.

[HM2Viking]

MJ,
I think its a travesty that your school district is understaffed to this degree. What this article speaks to is nurses are acting as providers of last and sometimes only resort. I am surprised that your school district is able to staff at this low of level given the number of kids with multiple medical involvements in school these days.

Sorry,
I didn't catch your post before posting. I wasn't criticizing your post. I actually was responding to CR's post as well.
Sorry for any misunderstanding.

[VivaLasViejas]

The district staffs this way because they're always "broke". They train secretaries to administer meds and teachers to do CPR, then call it good. (A child with special medical needs has to have his/her own private-duty nurse.) YET---they will not allow an asthmatic 16-year-old to carry his albuterol inhaler with him, but force him to go to the office when he's dyspneic so it can be administered by someone with less than half the knowledge of his disease that he has. It makes my blood boil even to think of it; to say the least, I'm far from confident in this school, but it's the better of the two high schools in this town and there is no alternative. I don't know what other parents who have no insurance do, or whose kids have more serious problems...........I guess they just drop back and punt, because the chances of the district nurse being in any given building on any given school day are slim and none.

[x_coastie]

Yet another reason to get the government out of education (and keep them out of health care as much as possible.) They can't run a school system efficiently enough to buy the students books and staff an adequate number of nurses (as MJlrn97 pointed out), the teachers are under paid and our students are under educated. This just proves the government is not up to the task of running a complex system such as health care or education.
I know the title is about poor kids being so sick they can't learn, but as CRNA2007 pointed out, the underlying message is the just pushing the socialized medicine agenda.

[Elvish]

This is not about pushing any agenda. These are real things that happen to real people.

I used to work in a community health center and we worked all the time with school nurses who would turn to us because the family was uninsured/underinsured and couldn't get the help they needed. Most of the time it was things like eyeglasses, but once it was a kid with pulmonic stenosis and resultant FTT. Thanks to collaboration with his school nurses, he finally (after much pushing) had open heart surgery to repair the damage done by 6 years of congenital defects.

Absolutely he had learning issues because of his insurance status. This child was/is a US citizen. His father was nowhere to be found. His mother was a migrant farmworker. He was smaller, had more behavioral problems, and had numerous nutritional issues because his little body worked so hard just to function. Yes, I would be ok with my tax dollars going to fund health insurance for kids like him.

[CRNA2007]

So everyday 5000 kids require the school nurse? What we get from the left is that it is amazing that a kid didn't die in their sleep because they have no health care. It's amazing people can make it through the day because they have no healthcare. Next, we'll get endless stories of people commiting suicide because they have no healthcare.

Originally Posted by mjlrn97

What school nurses? In our district, there is one---count 'em, ONE---nurse for over 5,000 school kids from kindergarten through 12th grade. Don't you think it's rather unrealistic to lay this kind of responsibility at the feet of ONE nurse?