LELAND — Tending to scraped knees. Talking parents through a recent positive COVID test and the new guidelines for isolation. Keeping track of which students have routine vaccinations and which do not. Administering insulin to diabetic students.
These tasks are included in the requirements of the job of school nurse, a post that Stephanie Burns has taken up for the past several weeks at Leland Public School.
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“Overall, it has been a really great experience despite such a challenging time for most,” Burns said.
Other than a parent with a background in nursing who stepped up at the beginning of the pandemic, Burns is the first nurse Leland Public School has had in many years, Superintendent Stephanie Long said.
Michigan has one of the worst school nurse to student ratios in the United States — about 1 nurse for every 6,000 students — said Rachel VanDenBrink, President of the Michigan Association of School Nurses.
Some states require at least one nurse in every school district or school building, but the Michigan Department of Education leaves the hiring of school nurses up to individual school districts, and putting more money into classrooms usually takes precedence over paying a school nurse’s salary.
“School nurses often just kind of fall by the wayside when budgets are cut through the years. They’re kind of just on the ‘nice to have’ list,” VanDenBrink said. “I’ve been in school nursing 20 years, and I can’t remember a time when there were (a lot of) nurses.”
During the pandemic, an increase in concerns around public health and new streams of funding for schools led to a significant increase in the number of school nurses in Michigan, VanDenBrink said.
This was the case for schools in Benzie and Leelanau counties, like Leland, that have benefited from a partnership with the Benzie-Leelanau District Health Department.
With COVID-related funding, BLDHD has placed one nurse at Leland, a part-time nurse between Benzie County Central Schools and Frankfort-Elberta Area Schools and a part-time nurse between Suttons Bay Public Schools and Northport Public School over the course of the pandemic.
These nurses have helped with with contact tracing, COVID testing and general communicable disease management.
Now, as schools are changing their approaches to the pandemic, these nurses will slide into more traditional roles in these school districts, such as educating the school community on general health and wellness, compiling vaccination records and creating plans for care for students with chronic health needs.
“This is work that has to be done. If a nurse isn’t there to do it, somebody in the school needs to,” said Michelle Klein, BLDHD director of personal health.
In the absence of nurses before and during the pandemic, many school staff had to take on tasks related to student health, whether it’s doling out vital medication or managing vaccination records.
“We had a lot of staff doing things that are sort of outside of their normal job description,” said Northport Superintendent Neil Wetherbee of the beginning of the pandemic. His school’s part-time nurse, Carolyn Seabury, started working with Northport students about a year ago.
“It was really nice to have someone who was eligible, could answer questions for families and be the bridge between the school and the health world,” Wetherbee said.
The health department also recently received funding for a school wellness program for Benzie schools, which would be continually funded by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. This funding will provide Crystal Lake Elementary and Benzie middle and high school students access to a school nurse and a social worker who will develop systems within the school for taking care of students’ wellness or chronic health needs, said Superintendent Amiee Erfourth.
Betsie Valley and Lake Ann Elementary schools will also continue have access to a part-time nurse, shared with Frankfort-Elberta schools, Erfourth said.
For the past few years, Central Wellness, the Community Mental Health Service Provider for Manistee and Benzie counties, has provided Benzie Central students with mental health counselors.
That will still remain when the student wellness program is officially implemented, Erfourth said.
Leslie Grappin started working with Benzie Central students earlier in the 2021-22 school year. Prior to that, the school district did not have a nurse for about 10 to 15 years, Erfourth said.
“I think it’s just amazing to know that the students at Benzie Central are going to have those opportunities to have their wellness cared for,” Erfourth said. “Whether it’s mental or physical, it’s nice to know that we’re going to have those additional supports.”
Other school districts in BLDHD’s jurisdiction will have to continue to work with the health department to “braid different funding sources together” to maintain their nurses on staff, Klein said. Some of the funding that supports these nurses, who are contracted through the health department, is temporary.
Some of the schools have already received or are in the process of applying for “31o” funding, which covers up to 100 percent of the annual cost of school psychologists, social workers, counselors or nurses in the first year.
In the second year, that coverage dips to 66 percent and in the third year, it dips to 33 percent.
Superintendent of Frankfort-Elberta schools Jeff Tousley said he and his other administrators are looking for more grant funding, but that the school district will likely have to pull a little out of its general fund to support their school nurse.
Leland is unable to pay for a nurse’s salary through their general fund, so Long is hoping the state legislature will take the issue up and arm schools with more stable, robust streams of funding to support their nurses, she said.
If not, Long said she and Leland’s other school administrators will work with the health department to figure out exactly how they can keep a nurse on staff, because she doesn’t want her students to have to go without one again.
“The reality is: the needs of schools to have nurses on staff existed prior to the pandemic and were only magnified during the pandemic,” Long said. “They’re not going to go away after the pandemic.”
