School nurses watch as school salary legislation unfolds

By MICHAEL NEARY
Fort Dodge Messenger

Amendment would include nurses in proposed teacher salary increase

Cooper Elementary School nurse Juli Springer helps third-grader Emma Gibson, 9, tally her weight.

Members of the state House of Representatives are working on an amendment to include school nurses in a bill to raise Iowa teachers’ salaries — a move supporters laud as they cite families’ heavy reliance on school nurses.

“I would love to see nurses compensated along the same line as teachers,” said K.C. Williams, community health nurse with the Fort Dodge Community School District.

The bill proposes an investment of $35 million into teacher pay next year and more than $40 million the following year, according to the Associated Press.

The current version of the bill, Senate File 277, does not include nurses among the recipients of those additional dollars. But the Senate will most likely adopt an amendment from the House later this week, according to Sen. Daryl Beall, D-Fort Dodge.

“By the time it goes to the governor, I’m 99 percent sure it will be there,” said Beall, a member of the Education Committee, in a telephone interview Monday evening.

Starting salaries are the same for nurses and teachers in the Fort Dodge district, but the progression of nurses’ salaries in the district falls behind that of teachers. Williams said that nurses, for instance, are not rewarded for advanced degrees in the same way that teachers are.

In arguing for the importance of including nurses in the bill, State House Speaker Pat Murphy told the Associated Press that many students rely heavily on the health care administered by school nurses.

“For a lot of kids, this is the health care they will receive, the school nurse,” said Murphy, D-Dubuque, in a published report.

Local health officials contended that school nurses provide key diagnostic services for students, as well as assistance in getting children into the care of physicians.

“A lot of parents don’t know that their children have vision deficits until they get a note saying, ‘Your child didn’t pass the vision screening,’” said Deb Shelton, an Area Education Association representative and special education consultant.

For some families, nurses play a crucial role in setting up appointments and providing transportation, according to Juli Springer, the nurse for Cooper Elementary School.

“Some of our parents were special education students themselves,” added Springer. “It’s just hard for them to know some of the things that for other parents are common sense.”

Cooper is the school, Springer said, that hosts the district’s most medically fragile students. Springer said 60 percent of the students who attend have an illness or health care need.

Williams said the absence of adequate health insurance also places a strain on some families. Eleven percent of students in the district, she said, do not have health insurance.

Williams said government-funded insurance programs — Hawk-I insurance and Title 19 — provide strong coverage for the families who qualify. The problem, she said, arises when parents need to collect their income records for the application.

‘‘Some (parents) work for cash, some work for a month and they’re unemployed,’’ said Williams, who noted that shifting residency on the part of children can also make completing applications difficult.

Williams mentioned another group of parents for whom insurance provides only limited help.

‘‘For the middle-class family with both parents working, they’re carrying insurance with a high deductible and there are no resources to take care of them,’’ she said.

Williams said 36 percent of the district’s students carry private insurance, with 53 percent participating in either Hawk-I or Title 19.

Springer said the services she provides at Cooper Elementary include diabetic care, tube feedings, treatment for severe asthma seizures and allergy treatment. She said she had eight ‘‘EpiPens’’ to inject epinephrine into students who might experience allergic reactions. She said she also helped students use insulin pumps.

Shelton said some of these treatments, such as the EpiPens, were far less common about five years ago.