As the Juneau School District begins deliberations on its 2013-2014 budget, school nurses are calling for more help. Several of Juneau’s school nurses and supporters addressed the JSD board members during public comment period at the board meeting Tuesday night.
JSD Superintendent Glenn Gelbrich has already met with the administrative team that will help guide the creation of the fiscal year 2014 budget. A final version is expected to go before the City and Borough of Juneau Assembly on March 5.
In the meantime, competition is high for available funds. It is expected that the 2014 budget will be as thin as — or thinner than — the current budget.
School nurses took a hit during tough negotiations that led to the current school budget. Although the school district was able to eliminate $1.2 million of over $6 million in cuts from the 2012 and 2013 budget, it was not able to reinstate two full-time nurse positions.
School nurse Maureen Hall said nurses were not given enough time to adapt to the cuts.
“What has played out this year is a result of that,” Hall said. “It has sent a system into chaos.”
Dzantik’i Heeni and Floyd Dryden middle schools share a nurse, as do Riverbend Elementary and Thunder Mountain High School.
“The school nursing situation has clearly become a nightmare in my mind,” Auke Bay Elementary school nurse LuAnn Powers said. “And I’m only responsible for one school. Without a nurse in every school the kids aren’t being served.”
Powers said she does not like being too far from her school. While staff is aware of emergency procedures, Powers has had to cancel personal and work trips because she was not able to get a substitute.
Powers said she feels the burden to do something to help due to her seniority as a JSD nurse. She said the school district is losing nurses due to the difficulties of the job.
“We’ve lost one of our more wonderful nurses,” Powers said, “Janell Meade.”
Juneau resident Lori Burgan said she supports Juneau’s school nurses.
By cutting nurses, Juneau is not taking care of its kids, Burgan said.
“We want them to be healthy and we want them to be safe and we have this odd system,” Burgan said.
JSD fifth-grade teacher Adam Berkey said he feels that the current school nurse situation could cause “huge regrets” going forward.
“I don’t know if this is a time to gamble,” Berkey said.
• Contact reporter Russell Stigall at 523-2276 or at russell.stigall@juneauempire.com.
Comments (33)
Add commentGrateful for the service of the school nurses
I am personally grateful for the service of the school nurses. I have had three children in the school district all of whom at one time or another needed to visit the nurse. My daughter was beaten up by a bully on the school bus..did she need an ambulance? No, but she did need someone to attend to her and place a call to her parent (me). My son, was hurt on the playground and suffered a closed head injury. Did he need an ambulance, possibly but who gets to make that call? The other kids on the playground, the teachers? The nurse assessed my child and made sure that further injury did not occur. The nurses make sure that all children have immunizations that are up to date. They provide basic care, administer medications and make great efforts to educate those they care for in nutrition, health, contraception, hygene, etc. They make calls to parents to tell them that their child is sick. And just think about how often parents send their children to school sick exposing others to whatever it is and it is the last place the child should be. But who deals with that? There are tons of places that money could be saved but elimination of the school nurses is not one of them. They work very hard and deserve a lot of respect for what they do. I consider my tax money well spent on having school nurses...I sure wish others felt that way.
Why yes I am judgemental
I also run a business and I can't remember last time I was sick it's been many years since I've had a real cold or flu, in the public servant employment sector servants have to catch up to the private sector and realize there's no $$$ and sacrifices have to be made and again my point is why should a school take personal time off during the school year?
No school employee should be taking personal time off during the school year with all the holidays they have off along with the summers..
I have no sympathy for the waste of my tax dollars.
It's amazing that we hold government employees to a lower standard than we do McDonald's.
We won't tolerate poor service from McDonald's but we accept poor service from the government.
CBJ needs to start looking at
CBJ needs to start looking at hiring from private businesses to fill the revenue gaps.
If there is a short fall of revenue for some of our needed basic services like - public safety - then hire private security for example for less cost to CBJ- rather than having the public go without the service.
Private nurses / nursing assistants at the schools / on call private nurses...
Private security to help out with law enforcement, these could be seasonal, or as needed basis....
The idea is to keep costs to CBJ low but not cut services to the public. Private hires would not be CBJ employees, so this would keep wages, benefits and increases to employee benefits from eating up the budget