Meeting helps nurses transform into leaders

School nurses play a vital role in the lives of students, but few people know it. One of the goals of AFT Healthcare’s School Nurse Leadership Development conference is to help school nurses educate their colleagues  and the community about how important it is to have a school nurse on staff. In May, more than 40 school nurses from across the country attended the two-day conference, which featured workshops and presentations to teach the nurses to become advocates for their profession and their students through legislation and action.

One of the presenters, Marcia Ellsworth, a school nurse from Wichita, Kan., spoke to participants about how the school nurses in her district mobilized to save 79 school nurse positions that faced elimination because of budget cuts. Upon learning that the district planned to cut most of the school nurses from the budget, Ellsworth and her nurse colleagues quickly became activists.

“We let the school board and the community know that our duties went beyond Band-Aids,” said Ellsworth.

The Wichita school nurses made themselves more visible by holding in-service trainings for staff and publicly reporting the number of student and staff visits they received daily. Their action opened the eyes of school officials to the need for nurses, Ellsworth explained.

Mobilizing colleagues and the community is especially important because school nurses not only are being threatened by a lack of funding, but many school districts are relying on staff to deliver medical care instead of hiring full-time school nurses.

Studies have shown that having a nurse in school makes a difference in how children perform academically, and also bolsters their physical and emotional well-being. The experience in the McComb County, Miss., school district is a good example. Pat Cooper, superintendent, told the nurses at the conference about the school health program he initiated in 2001.

“In the first year, every school asked for a school nurse,” said Cooper.

At the time, there was only one nurse for the entire district of nearly 3,000 students. Today there is a school nurse for every 450 students. In addition to hiring more school nurses, Cooper began offering health education, staff wellness programs, food and nutrition counseling and other health services. He also took out vending machines and instituted physical education programs. The result has been remarkable: The dropout rate—35 percent at one point—is now less than 1 percent, fewer students are placed in special education classes and a higher percentage of students are reading at grade level.

“We had to make some hard choices,” said Cooper. But making sure students come to school healthy and ready to learn has given them an opportunity to do well emotionally, physically and academically, he said. “You have to think about what you want your school district to be and then get together with the school and the community and use your leverage to address their needs."