
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 19, 1995                   TAG: 9505190063
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NURSING NEED

MANY LOCAL school divisions have a ready excuse for not providing school nurses at a ratio of one nurse for every 1,000 students, as medical organizations and the General Assembly say should be the standard. It goes like this:

If the state wants us to have a school nurse for every 1,000 kids, the state ought to put up the money to hire the nurses.

To be sure, the state should appropriate more funds for school nurses, and school-health programs in general. It is not, however, entirely the state's responsibility; it is also the localities'. And several Virginia localities aren't using the lack of a funded state mandate as a dodge. They are forging ahead to meet the standard - because it's the right thing to do for their schoolchildren.

In this category, for example, is the city of Roanoke. Four years ago, it had the equivalent of three full-time school nurses for its student body of approximately 12,000. Today, it has the equivalent of 11.6 full-time school nurses for about 12,600 students - only a hair short of meeting the recommended one-for-1,000 ratio.

For this improvement, a good measure of the credit goes to School Board Chairman Nelson Harris. He has relentlessly prodded the city to hire more school nurses, from the time he first sought appointment to the School Board in 1992.

Harris, the 30-year-old minister at Ridgewood Baptist Church, has been on a crusade to improve health-care services for Roanoke's youngsters since many of their health-related problems became more common knowledge here. These problems notably include access to health services, particularly for more than half of the city's public-school children who are classified as poor.

Other localities would do well to heed the words Harris wrote in a commentary article for this newspaper in November 1992: ``How a community cares for and nurtures its youngest and most vulnerable citizens is a mark by which that community is measured.''

Whether their school boards are appointed or elected, other localities facing a shortage of school nurses also would do well to find Harris-style crusaders, and appoint or elect them.

by CNB