FEDERAL SUPPORT NEEDED TO REBUILD NEW ORLEANS AND REOPEN SCHOOLS
Until schools reopen and houses are rebuilt, residents will not want to return to New Orleans, teacher Gwendolyn Adams told Democratic representatives on the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce at a late March hearing in New Orleans on the future of education there.

“Katrina destroyed so many lives and homes,” said Adams, a 25-year veteran teacher and member of the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), “but we cannot allow post-Katrina policies to destroy the hope and opportunity that public schools represent.” Adams and other educators and students who testified at the hearing urged the lawmakers to get more federal money to New Orleans to help rebuild and reopen schools, buy new equipment, rehire staff and cover healthcare costs for laid-off employees.

The hearing was part of a tour of the area led by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democrat. The lawmakers visited schools in St. Bernard Parish, as well as Southern University in New Orleans.

Adams told the committee that many critics of the New Orleans school system “have never stepped foot in our schools” and have favored “quick fixes over long-term reform and resources.”

While schools in neighboring parishes reopened quickly after Katrina, only five noncharter public schools are open in New Orleans. “There’s no excuse why we’re not reopening more schools,” she said, adding that the school where she taught suffered only minor damage.

She also told the representatives about the “shameful” treatment of New Orleans school employees. In February, the vast majority of the school system’s 75,000 teachers, PSRPs and other employees were laid off. Adams said she found out by word of mouth and never received an official termination letter. One of the biggest hardships has been the lack of health coverage, which most former employees can’t afford now that they lack jobs.

“We cannot truly bring New Orleans back to life until we bring her schools back to life,” Adams said. “My colleagues and I desperately want to help in this effort but cannot do so under the current circumstances.”

SCHOOL NURSE OF THE YEAR CHAMPIONS SCHOOL HEALTH
By her own admission, merry grasska is not accustomed to getting a lot of attention. But when she was named National School Nurse of the Year by the National Association of School Nurses, Grasska welcomed the opportunity to promote the role of the school nurse and the importance of school health.

“This has been a growth experience for me,” says Grasska, whose tenure comes to a close in June. “The best part about being the National School Nurse of the Year is being able to shed some light on my job for others who otherwise might not know what I do.”

Grasska, a member of the Newport-Mesa (Calif.) Federation of Teachers, Local 1794, and a nurse practitioner, has been a school nurse in her district for 16 of her 23 years in the field. She began her career as a public health nurse in San Francisco in the early 1980s, then transitioned into school nursing. For Grasska, “school health is just another expression of public health. The focus is still on health promotion, just in an educational arena,” she says.

Grasska came to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in Costa Mesa, Calif., in 1989 and has spent most of her career at the Hope Healthy Start Clinic, a school-based facility she helped establish more than a decade ago.

“The clinic is open to children of all ages. It provides well-child care, health promotion and immunization, and has become a resource for the community,” says Grasska.

In addition to her work at the clinic, Grasska is a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine College of Medicine, and in the nursing department at California State University, Fullerton. She takes the time to introduce medical students and nurse practitioner students to school health and the role of the school nurse.

“School nursing has been a very fulfilling career,” says Grasska, but like all jobs, it has its challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the increasing demand for school nurses, says Grasska. “Students are requiring more medical services, but there are not enough school nurses despite the high level of need.”

She also is concerned about the conflict that often arises when nurses are forced to delegate duties to nonmedical personnel to comply with school district policy.

“Training unlicensed personnel to monitor students makes nurses leery,” says Grasska. Children with medical needs have a right to attend school, but there are not enough licensed nurses available to monitor them, she says. As a result, “we’re always trying to sort through that and what’s best for the child.”

To ensure her students receive the services they need, Grasska makes it a point to collaborate with teachers, parents and community members.

“If we are going to keep kids healthy in school, we have to network and work as a team,” she says.

RALLY IS A BOOST FOR THE MINIMUM WAGE
The AFT was visible and vocal at a Capitol Hill rally calling for an increase in the minimum wage. Led by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and former Sen. John Edwards rally participants urged Congress to pass Kennedy’s Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15 an hour—where it has been for nine years—to $7.25 over two years. Howard University student Alanna Timmerman spoke about her work with the group Progressive Maryland to get that state’s minimum wage increased. She challenged any member of Congress who opposes a higher wage to “see how far $5.15 can take you.” The AFT petition in support of the minimum wage legislation is at www.unionvoice.org/campaign/minimum_wage06.