The recent New Hanover County budget, passed along partisan lines by the Republican-controlled Board of Commissioners, included a host of spending cuts. One in particular that the board’s Democrats objected to was axing $1.6 million for 14 school nurses, meaning the county health department had to come up with a plan where 60% of schools share nursing staff. Previously, each school had a dedicated nurse.
Jessica Morris has a third grader at Codington Elementary School who is a Type 1 diabetic. Codington is assigned a full-time nurse but because another nurse went out on leave — and all positions are frozen — that nurse now has a split schedule.
Morris said parents have been informed that they are training other school staff, including teachers and receptionists, to respond when the nurse is out.
“The different types of conditions we have in our schools can't always be self-managed, and it requires someone who understands the seriousness and just the nuances of the different types of conditions. And when these nurses are stretched with hundreds and hundreds of children trying to remember who does what, it's going to lead to trouble,” she said.
Michelle Weirathmueller’s daughter attends Anderson Elementary School, and also deals with Type 1 diabetes. She said her daughter is going to see three different nurses on three days of the week.
“I didn't even find out about this happening until last Thursday, so it's been a bit of a whirlwind since then, trying to figure out how to manage it,” she said.
Weirathmueller said she’s considering trying to rearrange her work schedule to be available for her daughter around snack or lunch time so that her insulin is properly managed.
Ashley Point is another Codington parent, whose child has a rare syndrome that includes epilepsy — and could require rescue medicine that has to be delivered within four minutes.
“It gives me peace of mind to know that there's a nurse there to respond in case of a seizure or any other emergencies, and the fact that he [the nurse] might not be there and that the staff would have to pick up that slack is unacceptable. I mean, it's just going to cause him harm and all the other children who struggle with any kind of medical needs,” she said.
Wendy Principe has two children at Gregory Elementary, both of whom have asthma, and her daughter has a condition that requires her to wear a glucose monitor.
She trusted that her children were safe when the nurse — who they know by her first name, April — was there. Nurse April has since been reassigned to an entirely different school. Like Morris, Principe worries about non-medically trained staff reading her daughter’s emergency action plan.
“April knew what to do. A nurse knows what to do. When somebody has low blood sugar, they don't need to read an emergency action plan. They don't need to read labels to figure out what 15 grams of simple sugar is,” she said.
Principe now has to work with two different nurses who only come to the school twice a week.
Jennifer Humphreys is a parent at Ogden Elementary. She said she’s grateful to have a full-time nurse; she was told by staff that they were able to keep theirs because the school has higher rates of students who are prone to seizures, but said she empathizes with those who don’t have one.
“Not being able to have the peace of mind that your child's able to go to school and know that someone is going to be there to kind of pick up where you leave off, dropping them off, is just insane and scary and crazy,” she said.
While the public has yet to see the rationale behind these plans, parents like Principe see a trend around which schools received a full-time nurse and which have part-time ones.
“It seems to disproportionately be those schools that are historically in lower-income areas that are having to share, the higher income areas aren't having to share, and that feels, obviously, quite frankly, kind of discriminatory, unfair,” Principe said.
According to a previous statement sent by NHC health director Jon Campbell, the plans were based on “historical student acuity (medications, emergency action plans, chronic conditions, etc.) and geographic proximity of schools. The model was developed with NHCS to ensure agreement.” Campbell also agreed to an interview later in the week to further discuss the process of allotting the nurses.
Democratic County Commissioner Stephanie Walker, a former school board member, said she’s tried to assign resources based more on need.
“The [state] funding formula talks about the amount of students in the room, but honestly, more resources are needed in schools that have the highest need. And sometimes the highest need is not always the highest populated schools,” Walker said.
At the New Hanover County school board agenda meeting on Monday, Chief Financial Officer Ashley Sutton said they use the state nursing allotment specifically for exceptional children (EC) health services positions.
NHCS school board member Democrat Judy Justice said at this meeting that she wanted the state allotment funding formulas to change so that they can provide more nurses — something that Superintendent Dr. Christopher Barnes has also mentioned.
“The state, and we've talked about this a lot, and this is the reason we're in the shape we are in. Now we are really horribly underfunded. That is the reason that the county has to come and try to carry the difference. Luckily, we have money from the county this cycle, but the state allotments did not provide enough nurses for all of our schools properly,” she said.
In conversations with these parents, they say the staff and the nurses feel uneasy about being put in this situation.
“I think they're nervous. I don't think anybody feels like this is a fine plan, okay? I think that they are bound by what has happened, right? Like they don't have the power to change it,” Principe said.
Walker said she wishes she had the power to change it — but the approved county budget reverted to the state minimum, which is one nurse per 750 students.
“I think it's disappointing in a lot of ways, because I think having a school nurse there is very important for the safety of our students and for the parents to know that their kids will be okay,” she said.
At last week’s agenda meeting, Democratic commissioner Rob Zapple brought up a state reimbursement for $11.3 million for the county’s purchase of Cape Fear Community College’s nursing building. The county wasn’t expecting the money this year, and staff had planned to place it in the county's fund balance. Zapple suggested spending part of it on nurses.
“I just want to point this out and see if we might be able to use some of this money to go and say, to pay for school nurses, which is desperately needed as we begin this school season,” he said.
Later during that meeting, Republican commissioner Dane Scalise said he didn’t want to revisit the budget.
“I don't believe that there is the will to relitigate the issue of the budget. We need to move on to the other matters that are at hand. And I am not in support of us going back on what we've already done several months ago, and it is time to move forward with the plan that we have already implemented,” Scalise said.
Zapple replied, “I don't want to relitigate anything. I'm simply trying to move forward with what is new money coming into our county coffers and to put it to the best use for our public.”
Meanwhile, Morris said she and some of her fellow parents aren’t giving up when its comes to asking the county to put more nurses back into schools.
“So what I would like is a budget amendment to be pushed through by the commissioners for the money that they didn't expect to have when they did the budget vote in July,” she said. “I can continue to find more parents to speak up about it and share our side of the story and just reveal the implications of the decision. They go far and wide, and it's a very dangerous decision, honestly.”
Walker said it’s important for the public to stay informed and she’s used to constituents voicing their concerns to her.
“You have to really pay attention to who are making these decisions, because especially on the local level, it's super important. Clearly, it affects your lives pretty quickly when a decision is made,” she said.
[Disclosure notice: Rob Zapple serves on the WHQR Board of Directors, which has no role in editorial decisions.]
Links, prior reporting
- Jessica Morris and some of the other NHCS parents have since started a petition to reinstate the nurses
- NHC schools used to have dedicated nurses. Now, over half will have to share
- As NHCS superintendent faces a multi-million-dollar shortfall, key policy makers remain quiet
- After strenuous debate, New Hanover County commissioners pass a significantly reduced budget in a split vote
- New Hanover County releases new property assessments representing “unprecedented” growth
