Maya McFadden Photos
Parents Claire Roosien, Peter Butler, Vicki Grubaugh appeal to the Board of Ed.
Worthington Hooker School parents are pleading for a school nurse at the school’s K‑2 campus on Canner Street — a concern they initially raised to the Board of Education back in December.
Hooker parents testified to the Board of Education Monday evening during its full board meeting.
The parents urged the board and city Health Department to fill the nurse opening for the school’s elementary campus at 180 Canner St. The upper school for 3 – 8th graders at 691 Whitney Ave does have a nurse.
School nurses are not hired by New Haven Public Schools but rather the city’s health department. The school system’s spokesperson said there has been challenges filling these roles to equip all schools with enough nurses.
The city has the opening for school nurses here listed under Public Health Nurse, which would staff openings at school-based primary healthcare offices.
Vicki Grubaugh, a parent of two students at Hooker, said one of her children attends the K‑2 Canner Street campus. Grubaugh shared a glimpse of the challenges that Hooker paraprofessional Marie Ackerman, who brought up concerns about the lack of a nurse to the board in December, has dealt with over last week as the school’s administrative assistant is out.
While Ackerman filled in for the front desk and office last Friday, “she’s been dealing with nonstop issues that would normally be dealt with by a nurse.” Specifically, last Friday, Ackerman tended to 14 students with bumps, cuts, fevers, and nose bleeds at the K‑2 campus. The day before, she had students with fevers over 101 degrees falling asleep in the office while waiting on parent pickups.
“This is completely unfair to those students and their parents that have no nurse to tend to these problems,” Grubaugh said.
Grubaugh and other parents emphasized that having no nurse is both a risk to student safety and has caused teachers to be “taken out of the class and their scope of practice to address the injuries and health situations that are most appropriate for a nurse,” Grubaugh concluded.
The mother of a first, fourth, and sixth grader at Hooker, Claire Roosien added that in the past the upper school nurse would run back and forth between the two campuses. However, she said, “for the past several months I’ve been told that the nurse at the upper school is no longer permitted to travel to the lower school where my youngest child is.”
Last week, Roosien got a call from Ackerman because her son bumped his head and couldn’t get official medical attention, but he eventually was found to be OK.
“We are really only one serious incident away from a very dangerous situation,” Roosien said. “Our teacher, paras, administrative staff are giving hours and hours taking care of skinned knees, bloody noses, fevers, coughs that those hours should be spent educating our kids.”
Another parent of an eighth and sixth grader, Peter Butler, said his daughter has type 1 diabetes and benefits greatly from the Whitney Avenue campus nurse and expressed his support for the plea to hire another nurse for the lower school building. Butler also requested for more timely responses to the advocacy team as he said it took a month for the district to respond to the team’s initial email.
Elementary Hooker parent Julienne Hadley Zoomed into Monday’s meeting to testify that her kids in the past have had to deal with unaddressed head injuries at the school. She said the lack of a nurse and delayed response times to injuries jeopardizes student safety and welfare.
“Furthermore the presence of a nurse goes beyond addressing emergencies. They can identify and support health issues early on, provide essential care for chronic conditions, administer medications, and more,” Hadley added.
She concluded that she has concerns that legal action can be taken if an emergency arises in the future.
The final parent to testify, David Tate, also pushed for a K‑2 campus nurse. Tate said his son who attends the upper school building has type 1 diabetes and “we would not be able to go to school if we did not have a nurse in the building.”
Tate’s son must see the 3 – 8th campus nurse several times throughout the day and would be at risk if he couldn’t.
Watch the full meeting above.
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