If a student comes to the clinic and I feel that it's necessary to send them home, the parent can sign them out from my clinic and they are counted present for the day, even if they've only been at school for a few minutes. Well, I'm having parents that know this that are sitting in the office waiting for me to arrive at 7:30, and the moment I walk in, they want me to evaluate their kid. Some of them bring them in obviously sick and tell me so: Johnny just vomited 3 times before we got here but I wanted you to take a look at him first and see if you think he's ok to stay in classâ€, or He had a fever all night/all morning but I wanted you to check firstâ€. It's usually the same parents that are coming in doing this over and over. I started telling these parents that if their kid is sick, that they shouldn't bring them to school and so I started declining to sign them out since I saw them before school started. Front office staff says it's actually ok for me to sign them out even before school as long as I've evaluated them but I said NOOO, this is ridiculous because how can I sign them out of school if school hasn't even started? So then these parents started waiting until the bell rings and immediately step in to my clinic to say Johnny threw up, has fever/whatever, can you pull him out of class and check on him to see if he needs to go home?†They're doing this on purpose so that their kids aren't counted absent and therefore parents don't have all these absences building up that they have to answer for or so that their kids' perfect attendance record isn't ruined. I can't really refuse to send the kid home because they really shouldn't be there, but I can't stand that they are abusing my sign-out abilities this way and in the process are putting the rest of the kiddos at risk, not to mention dragging their own sick kid out of bed and into school just for the sake of attendance. Have y'all dealt with this and what did you do to discourage it?
Wow, that is an odd thing. Don't you have to have like a ton of unexcused absences to be fined for truancy? Here, as long as the parent calls the attendance office the absence is excused. If it is longer than 3 days a doctor's note is needed. Why would you even need to go to the school nurse? Or if I make arrangements to be out of town I communicate with the attendance office, not the nurse. Here there needs I think to be tons of excused absences before the school even gets involved. Do you live in a state where they just turn people over say after 5-10 absences? I just can't see where this would be an issue.
I'm sorry I did not update sooner, it's just the Winter Break happened and I'm still getting back into the groove of things
So I did end up taking this to administration who informed me and the office staff that getting signed out of the clinic creates an excused absence, but it is still an official absence and would count against the student. The office staff misunderstood that previously and this misinformation created all this confusion. As I clarified with admin, sure enough, they told me parents doing this repeatedly are parents that have warning notices due to truancy issues. Admin didn't know how often this had been happening until I showed them and they were quite shocked. Admin and I had meetings with those parents and clarified the policy with them. As soon as they were made aware that every absence counts against them, even the clinic ones, these "let me just sign my kid out through your clinic real fast" stopped! Their attendance improved and they were not being sent sick to my office, further confirming my suspicions that the kids were not really sick a lot of the times these parents brought them to me. I suspected this because I started getting firmer and telling these parents (before I met with admin about all this) that I was not going to be able to send the kid home unless I could confirm the fever/vomiting/whatever other ailment myself and that in that moment while they were in front of me there were no symptoms. This was all being said while of course the kid is swinging from the imaginary chandelier in the clinic. No symptoms+kid is acting normal = no reason he or she should not be in school. Sure enough, the kids never got sent to the clinic throughout the day and parents never called to check on the kids...so obviously kids couldn't have been too sick. Anyway, I'm happy this was resolved and I'm no longer feeling used through my sign-out book and these kids are in class WHERE THEY BELONG!
I was thinking of this issue this morning actually.
I had a mom send a student to school on the bus so I could dismiss him. But the kicker is I have no way to reach mom ("Our cell phone is out of minutes. But you can contact her on Facebook!!") AND mom would like the school van to drive him home, because they have no car.
Kid was afebrile with no vomiting. Off to class you go!!!
I am glad to hear that administration supported you on this issue at your school, Pixie.
Big Blondie, ASN, BSN, MSN, APRN
500 Posts
Sounds like the district is trying to keep up their numbers at your expense.