Arbogast

ELKINS — A parent and a school system employee shared concerns over a nursing shortage at schools during the Randolph County Board of Education’s attention Tuesday evening.

Two residents spoke during the public comment period of the BOE meeting Tuesday, beginning with Sarah Arbogast, who is both a nurse at one of the county’s schools and also a parent of a student.

“Taking into consideration the number of nurses we have staffed at this time, meeting the needs of all the students, especially the students with special medical needs, is becoming a daunting task for us to adequately provide enough nursing staff to the schools,” Arbogast told the Board of Education.

“I believe it has become necessary for us to put all of our heads together and find a solution to this increasing problem.”

Arbogast said nurses in the county have reached out to school system administrators over the past several weeks about the issue, but have gotten no response. Some of the nurses have gone as far as to quit their jobs, while others are thinking of doing the same, she said.

“Having nurses discouraged by the administration to the point of resignation has left us to fill even more vacancies,” Arbogast said. “We are at a critical low with nursing staff and the likelihood of a medical error being made is rising…

“If we make a medical error, not only will the county be held accountable, the nurse making the said error is likely to have his or her license suspended or revoked. Facing this reality, many of our nurses are concerned, not only for the wellbeing of our students, but their own families’ needs and they are hesitant to take this risk.”

Arbogast said medically fragile students throughout the county need one-on-one care and that the schools they attend are required to have a licensed nurse, or an LPN or RN.

“A few (nurses) have expressed their displeasure with the possibility of being tasked to provide one-on-one nursing care for a student,” she said. “Mostly due to the fact that we are only provided with one day of training at the beginning of the year for said student. It is an insufficient amount of time to assume any nurse is fully comfortable or confident in their ability to care for a student requiring individualized special care.”

Arbogast told the board she is a team player and is willing to do whatever is needed from her. She said she was speaking at the meeting to bring attention to the problem in the hope it will be resolved.

“I’m not placing blame on any one person for the situation we have found ourselves in, I’m here asking for help,” she said. “My goal is for us to come together and find a solution that will benefit all of us, but most importantly our students.”

Robert Fox, a parent of two students at Coalton Elementary School, spoke to the board about the nursing situation at that school. One of Fox’s children is a diabetic.

“We have concerns about students’ care, not so much with the nurse that is there, but just the fact that the nurse that is actually scheduled to be there is also scheduled as the pre-kindergarten aide,” Fox said. “It’s kind of pertinent to have a nurse that is not focused on 23 other kids in the pre-kindergarten class.”

“We are concerned that we don’t have a nurse dedicated to being a nurse there, because in an instant my daughter could need many things and you can’t rely on a teacher, who also has 20 other kids to take care of,” Fox said. “A nurse is medically trained, whereas a teacher’s aid is not. So we would like you to somehow consider getting a full-time nurse there for our children.”

During the personnel portion of the meeting, board members went into executive session to discuss school nurse coverage in the county. When reached for comment on the issue Wednesday morning, Superintendent of Schools Debbie Schmidlen offered the following statement to The Inter-Mountain.

“When the board moves into executive session, anything that is discussed may not be shared,” Schmidlen said. “This was not a voting item on the agenda, so no vote took place when the board returned from executive session.

“I am having conversations with our school nurses to work on future plans to address our current situation. I sincerely appreciate each one of our nurses and their commitment to caring for our students in Randolph County,” Schmidlen said.

Randolph County BOE meetings are held on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. at the county Board office.