JACKSON – Assistant School Superintendent Dan Baginski delivered a report detailing the many duties of the school nurses during the latest Board of Education meeting.
Baginski explained to the Board and the public the various responsibilities of school nurses. They are responsible for sharing any medical information with the appropriate staff such as COVID vaccinations, ongoing health problems and food allergies.
Nurses are also required to keep certified in CPR and the use of a defibrillator. “There is training every other year and they are required to retain those certifications and they are also the leaders of the emergency cardiac response teams otherwise known as the Janet’s Law teams. These teams include the school nurse and five other members of the school staff who have CPR certification. They are tested twice a year.”
He noted that nurses are able to draw from medical resources from the state and county health departments. “School nurses are probably one of the more regulated areas when it comes to public schools.”
“When it comes to staffing of nurses in our schools, we really look at two areas. One is the size of the schools and the frequency of visits and the acuity level of the students they serve,” Baginski said.
In his PowerPoint presentation he used a comparison showing the last school year, 2021-2022 to the 2018-2019, the last school year prior to the pandemic.
“Obviously, the size of the school in terms of the student population is an indicator as to how many visits students have made to nurse’s office but it isn’t our only indicator. There are some reasons why some schools have had more visits than others and it has to do with the acuity level,” he said.
“The acuity level is the severity of the needs and the level of nursing involved to meet those needs in a school setting. A level one acuity level for a student would be if a student requires services more frequently and level two are students who require more monitoring and the last two levels are conditions that have to be monitored on an occasional basis. Level 4 would not require monitoring or on an occasional basis,” he explained.
Baginski said that the school district would be returning to a more “pre-pandemic schedule for school trips and that also requires one nurse to be on field trips.” He noted that school nurses are involved with health screenings and support mental health concerns.
COVID Rules
Superintendent Nicole Pormilli noted prior to Baginski’s presentation that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) had changed the guidelines related to the COVID-19 pandemic and “we are awaiting the New Jersey Health Department and the Department of Education guidelines. Hopefully they will adopt the CDC guidelines.”
She also noted the CDC guidelines have lessened and have made masks optional. “We will keep our community informed as we gain more information.”
On August 15, Governor Phil Murphy lifted routine testing for teachers, school staff and state workers following the updated CDC guidance. The Murphy administration’s mask mandate for all students, teachers, and school staff expired on March 7, about a week after the CDC removed its indoor masking recommendation.
Board member Giuseppe Palmeri said, “I think our nurses do a phenomenal job and I want to commend all our nurses in all of our schools. Just for clarity, if our governor mandates that students or staff need to be vaccinated to go back to school would this plan involve our nurses to check the status of a vaccine mandate?”
Baginski responded that among any health rules required of the school district, “as it stands right now were the governor to make such a requirement to have covid vaccination we would have to follow the same rules.”
Palmeri said later in the session that he would vehemently oppose any mandate instituted by the governor requiring such a vaccination requirement and did not support the idea of nurses within the district assisting in that effort were it to occur.
