Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401070176
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Del. Linda Puller, D-Mount Vernon, planned to introduce a bill directing localities to provide one school nurse for every 1,000 students.
The bill would have required localities to use - or lose - $7.5 million in state money already provided for that purpose during the first two years of a four-year phase-in period. During the second two years, it would have provided additional money to localities that voluntarily hired more nurses.
Wednesday, the state Board of Education endorsed Puller's proposal to provide more money for school nurses but rejected the idea of forcing localities to hire them.
"It's a problem in many localities, that they have to decide between computers and instructional staff and nursing services," Chairman James Jones of Abingdon said. "They're all important.
"And what we wanted to do was to give an incentive to localities to move ahead in this area but without requiring a mandate that would put them into that situation of difficulty."
Puller said she was "encouraged" by the board's position and believed it would help to ensure passage of her bill, which she will consider revising to give localities more flexibility.
"We'll work with them," she said. "My bill hasn't yet been drafted, and I want to broaden some of our numbers, anyway."
Puller said she wanted to change the ratio of one nurse per 1,000 students, since some schools have several thousand students but would not need more than one nurse.
"The most I would ever hope for is one per school building," she said.
As to whether her bill would still penalize schools that do not spend state health-care money on health services, Puller said she would have to think about it.
She said she disagreed with a study presented to the board Wednesday showing localities spend state health-care money only on health services.
That isn't always the case, she said.
The number of registered nurses per school division in Virginia ranges from zero in some counties, such as Botetourt, to one in each of 82 schools in Virginia Beach.
Educators say the need for school nurses is growing as emotionally and physically handicapped children are being moved into regular classrooms. The shift sometimes requires principals, teachers or school secretaries to administer drugs, insert urinary catheters and perform other difficult procedures.
To reach a ratio of one nurse per 1000 students, Puller's bill would have called for $14 million in state money and $11 million in local spending over four years. She said she is not sure whether that will change.
The board's proposal made no mention of how many nurses should be hired or what it would cost the state, said Ned Carr, deputy superintendent for administration in the education department.
"We will have to prepare that," he said.
Because the board has no power to appropriate money, it purposefully kept its position broad, Jones said. The board voted to support a budget amendment that would provide matching funds - adjusted so that a greater share of money went to poor school districts - to schools that wanted to hire more nurses.
The vote followed a report from the state Department of Education showing a breakdown between state and local school health expenditures. The report revised estimates of state spending on health care from $5.8 million to $7.5 million, which was distributed among school divisions as part of the basic aid package for education.
by CNB