Alders Fund A Nurse For Every School

I thought we were broke. How do we have reserve funds if we are broke?

The Board of Alders should not be in the business of moving money around for public school nurses.

The New Haven Department of HEALTH should oversee the healthcare program of children while in school. And, being responsible for that, they are the ones who should make sure each and every school has a full-time, RN. In France, school nurses are required to have an RN degree.

The reason we need RNs in our schools is because like most other civilized countries, they have universal healthcare, so that children are taken care of mostly by that system. In the U.S. where we don't have equality in education, many students in poorer communities depend on the school nurse for their basic healthcare needs.

This is disgusting.

And, it is insulting to be hiring "part-time", temporary staff for this need.

Nurses need to have RNs and to be, as much as possible, paid enough to stay in one school for a long time. That way, he/she can have a deeper knowledge of that child's health and emotional history and the living circumstances in his/her family. And, the racial makeup of the new nurses should reflect the demographics of New Haven.

The social problems of inner-city kids are much more sever and complicated than those of kids in white schools. That is why the model of family healthcare in Cuba is famous and that is why people from all over the world, including the U.S. go there to learn about it.

In Canada, RN school nurses earn $81,670 a year or $41.88 per hour. Experienced school nurses in Canada earn $138,830/year. All nurses in New Haven's schools deserve at least this much because the problems they solve in a system without universal health care is greater that in countries that do have it.

Let's give the new nurses real, well-paying jobs with real benefits the way it's done in Canada. They are worth it and so are New Haven's Public School students.

Universal government funded healthcare that includes prescription medicine, eye care, dental care, hearing care and mental healthcare should be available for all. Most industrialized countries in this world have universal government funded healthcare.
Every school should have a permanent nurse trained in the type of care needed by children, a librarian, and counselor/therapist trained in child/adolescent mental health. It makes no sense that any school should be without a trained nurse during the school day even before the pandemic, and it is insanity during the pandemic. Counselors/therapists will be even more important because of the tremendous strain the pandemic has had in mental health, economic stress, the loss of loved ones, and loss of normal life activities has had in families will be causing more children to act out and needing counselors to help them work through their anxiety and depression.

Heather C. I totally agree with you.

And, the fact that the BOA has to approve "part-time" nurses is inhumane and disgusting.

And, it is the New Haven Health Department who should be dealing with this issue, not the BOA where everything seems to be political.

Given the disparities and the level of poverty in New Haven, especially, the school population is at a much higher need than the kids in white Westport, except for maybe a few of those students whose parents maybe alcoholics or drug addicts. Which vacation paradise do they go for school breaks to regenerate?
Aspen or a Caribbean island for a week?

Children in New Haven deserve to be met where they are when it comes to best healthcare available.
And, where are they for 5 days a week? In school!

And, it is the New Haven Health Department who should be dealing with this issue, not the BOA where everything seems to be political.

If Canadian school RNs, in general, make $81,670 a year, or $41.88 an hour then in a country where there is no universal healthcare, like in the richest country on earth, the nurses working in our inner-city schools need to have salaries that are double that.

The obstacles that school school RNs face in New Haven must be overwhelming...kids coming to school on busses with runny noses and not having the proper nutrition at home to fight off illnesses? Compare that to the white Westport kids who are driven to school by their parents in Volvo and Mercedes SUVS after their breakfast of the best nutrition available to rich kids today.

The burden is great for school RNs in New Haven...these workers are asked to do so much more than the RNs in places like white Westport where the best medical for children is a birthright.

Every New Haven school needs at least one highly paid full-time RN without exception.

Why do rich white kids get "democracy" and poor inner-city kids get whatever?

wesunidad: The article states that the money is being transferred to the Health Department, so Bond, not the BoE, will supervise these nurses.

In general, US healthcare workers earn more than Canadian, but the workload is greater. My wife would love my BC cousin's workload, but not her salary. Lots of Ontario nurses work in Detroit because the pay is better.

1644 You said, In general, US healthcare workers earn more than Canadian, but the workload is greater.

That may be the case, however I think it's difficult to compare the work of U.S. school nurses to school nurses who live and work in a system with universal healthcare.

Without universal healthcare, our kids start out behind the 8 ball. So, the problems our school nurses encounter are, in part, more complicated than those encountered in the Canadian system. They have capitalism, but unlike us, they have the safety nets we do not have.

The healthcare problems created by U.S. capitalism exacerbates the health problems of kids in poor cities such as New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport. These societal problems come into the schools.

With 22% of children in the U.S. living below the poverty level, universal healthcare would make a big difference in how they succeed because the households they live in would have people who also have universal healthcare.

Gone is the stress of Mom not going to the doctor because she can't afford it.
Gone is the worry about getting care for a child with chronic conditions like asthma that can then lead to absenteeism. Gone is the worry that winter is coming with colds that could have been nipped in the bud, but aren't, and then somehow the whole family is affected.

Universal healthcare is student support, it is family support, it is school support because public school healthcare simply cannot provide what a universal healthcare system can provide.

When a rich, white kid misses a few days of school that's not such a big deal...however, when a poor student misses a few days of school that can be disastrous.

In a society without universal healthcare, we will only know how awful it is AFTER we get the high quality, all inclusive healthcare we and our children deserve.

We will wonder why the hell we put up with this for so long.

Power concedes nothing without a demand.