Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993 TAG: 9304200393
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CITY SCHOOLS
ROANOKE CITY'S school-health program, it seems, can't win for losing.Less than a month after a new public-private partnership announced a pilot program to shore up school-based health services, and just a few months after the Roanoke School Board agreed to hire four additional school nurses, the federal government comes along and threatens to cut off funding for six part-time nurses already in the schools.
The feds say the school system can't continue to use Chapter 10 money to pay for nurses because it isn't devoting enough of its own funds for this purpose. The federal program - for children from low-income families - is supposed to be supplementary.
Oddly, school officials had been acting on the assumption that they might lose Chapter 10 money if they did commit more city funds for school nurses. Oh well. We've never professed to understand the ways of bureaucracy.
What is clear is that the schools will remain woefully understaffed by nurses if Washington makes good on its threat and the city fails to respond.
With six part-time nurses, the schools have had the full-time equivalent of three nurses for an enrollment of about 13,000 students. The state legislature says there should be one nurse for every 1,000 students. But it hasn't put its money where its mouth is, and doesn't enforce the standard.
So here's where it now stands: Instead of having six part-time nurses plus four full-time nurses, the schools plan to use $125,000 requested for the four full-time nurses to pay for eight part-time nurses. Got it?
That, we suppose, will be the full-time equivalent of four nurses for 13,000 students - which is better than the full-time equivalent of three nurses, but still a far cry from the state's recommended standard. And still a far cry from meeting the needs of Roanoke's schoolchildren, many of whom have virtually no access to routine health care other than what can be provided in the schools. They lack such access because their families can't afford it, and they don't have health insurance.
The ultimate answer is a national health-care system ensuring all children's access to basic medical care. Until that arrives, the city should dig deeper into its coffers to bring nurses' presence in the schools up at least to a bare minimum. It's below that now.