LEWISTON – Nurse Anne Moreau’s days are filled with sick kids, broken bones and medications. There are student screenings and paperwork, health lessons and parent meetings.
At Longley Elementary School, she has to deal with 230 kids.
The state says school nurses should be able to handle 800.
“You’ve got more and more children coming in with issues. Some kids are tube fed. Some kids are diabetic. Some kids have asthma. That ratio is too high,” Moreau said Monday.
She and other schools nurses want to get it changed.
The state’s new funding formula, called Essential Programs and Services, defines what is essential and helps schools pay for those needs. The formula says all Maine schools should have at least one nurse for every 800 kids.
Schools can have more than that, but they must pay for the extra staff on their own. Many school nurses worry that schools will cut staff to save money, putting children at risk.
Voters in School Union 30, which serves Lisbon and Lisbon Falls, had to make that decision at town meeting earlier this month. The school system currently has four nurses for 1,400 students. The state said it would only pay for two.
Laurie Pitcher, a nurse at the 730-student Lisbon Community School doesn’t know what she would have done if voters hadn’t agreed to spend $117,000 and keep all four positions. One of two nurses at Lisbon Community, Pitcher often is off dealing with emergencies at one end of the school while her partner is handling an office full of sick kids at the other.
“It would be unfortunate if someone got stung by a bee on the playground and I was taking care of somebody choking,” Pitcher said. “Both are life-threatening. Who would I leave to die?”
Grade level
While many school nurses are angry about the funding formula, others say one nurse per 800 kids is OK with them.
Amy Hart oversees 1,100 kids.
“It’s manageable for me,” said Hart, the only nurse at Tripp Middle and Leavitt Area High schools in Turner.
She and other high school nurses believe teenagers are more able to take care of themselves, manage chronic illnesses and deal with very minor injuries on their own. Younger children, she said, can be more time-consuming.
“I think a lot of it maybe depends on the grade level,” she said.
Maine schools average one nurse for every 688 students, according to the Maine Department of Education. That’s for all schools, kindergarten through grade 12.
State health experts recommend one nurse for every 500 kids. They recommend the ratio be cut in half when special needs students are mainstreamed into the general school population.
In most Maine schools, special needs students are mainstreamed.
DeEtte Hall, school nurse consultant for the Maine Department of Education, said she’s received numerous complaints about the funding formula and its school nurse provision. She understands that today’s nurses are busier than ever, she said, but right now there’s nothing the department can do.
It’s up to the Legislature to change the funding formula.
Members of the Maine Association of School Nurses say they hope to get the Legislature to do just that. They are documenting their workload and the number of students who need services every day. They plan to present it to lawmakers in the coming months.
At Longley Elementary, where Moreau tends to 230 children, she said she could stand to add 200 or 300 more kids to her workload. She’d have to give up some of her classroom lessons, but she’d still be able to handle emergencies, medication and screenings.
Add 600? She doesn’t think she could do it.
“Kids would be neglected,” she said.
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