Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 8, 1993 TAG: 9304080069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE SCHOOL NURSE FUNDING IN JEOPARDY
Months after the Roanoke School Board agreed to add four school nurses to its budget, the federal government appears poised to cut off funding for the other six."It's not a fait accompli," said Richard Kelley, executive for business affairs for the city school system.
But a group of federal auditors who reviewed Roanoke's Chapter One program last month told school administrators they would have to stop using federal money for school nurses after June 30.
Roanoke, which spends $110,000 of its Chapter One money on six part-time school nurses each year, is one of two localities in Virginia to use the money for student health care.
It can't do that anymore, the federal auditors told Assistant Superintendent William Hackley, because Roanoke doesn't pay for enough nurses on its own. Chapter One - a federal program that provides tutoring to low-income students - is supposed to supplement programs, not create new ones.
Roanoke relied solely on Chapter One funds to pay for its school nurses until the School Board agreed to put four full-time nurses into its budget this year. The 1993-94 budget awaits approval from City Council.
But even the four new nurses won't be enough to prove that Roanoke is supplementing its own program with federal money, Hackley said. He wasn't sure how many nurses the city would have to pay for in order to regain the Chapter One nurses.
Officials with the state's Chapter One office did not return phone calls Wednesday.
Despite the loss of federally funded nurses, Roanoke schools still will have two more nurses this fall than they had in the past, Kelley said.
The six part-time nurses, equivalent to three full-time positions, will keep their jobs, he said. The city will use the money for three of the new positions to pay for them. And it will add two more part-time positions.
The result: eight part-time nurses to equal the four full-time slots in the budget.
The School Board is asking for $125,000 for the four positions.
School Board member Nelson Harris, who led the push for the four nurses, said he expected the city to lose its Chapter One nurses eventually but didn't expect it to happen so soon.
"That was one reason for asking for these nurses," he said. Without them, "we'd have none right now."
Harris said the schools were better off with the locally funded nurses because they wouldn't suffer the same restraints as the Chapter One nurses, who technically were allowed to treat only those students taking Chapter One classes.
The nurses also were limited to working in the 15 city schools that offered Chapter One programs. The other 14 schools depended on city Health Department nurses, who make only weekly visits to provide student health care.
But Hackley said the schools will lose more than nurses when the official letter arrives cutting off funding. Roanoke also used Chapter One money to pay for eye exams and eyeglasses for impoverished children.
He hopes to keep those items in the Chapter One budget isn't optimistic, given the auditors' reasoning for cutting the nursing program.
"Unless the local division buys eyeglasses, we can't do that, either," he said.