The wrong side of history for Park City Schools?

Julie, the portion of the video you advise people to view does not address nursing needs at the elementary school level, nor does it have anything to do with the kids who want their nurse back at Parley’s Elementary. The board and superintendent discussed two possible FTE positions in student services who may be hired for the Fall – a counselor and a nurse, both at Treasure Mountain Jr. High. The consequence to the decision to non-renew Nurse Kennedy’s contract remains. Kids are out asking for donations to get her back. Never mind that parents already fund the Park City Education Foundation which handed over $600k to the Park City School District last year. Parents are now supposed to fund nurses and reading specialists and ESL aides, and … whatever other positions have been eliminated or non-renewed for various reasons.

I remind you, also, that more counselors are needed at Ecker Hill Middle School, given that it is currently understaffed according to the couselor:student ratio recommended by state and federal guidelines.

Erma, we should have on staff the trained nurses necessary to handle our student population, no matter what they do in other areas.

When we have good people on staff, whether they are teachers, nurses, principals, reading specialists, English as Second Language aides, we ought not treat them as dispensable and have them work in fear of losing their jobs. We have an ‘opportunity’ to do the right thing, which is to staff to the needs of our students and not to the needs and desires of our administration.

Full Time Nurses are an absolute necessity. Every day I drop off our 5 year old to school, I literally hand his life over to a caretaker. That caretaker should be a trained professional. My son travels to school with insulin, needles, an insulin pump, an insulin pen for when the pump fails, a glucose monitor, a timer since he has to wait between 0-45 minutes between an insulin injection and eating a carb, a carb-counting book, glucose tablets and juice boxes for when his blood sugar drops low. His blood glucose needs to be checked hourly.

Before we had a Type 1 Diabetic in our family, we knew virtually nothing about diabetes or the daily impact associated with being a Type 1 Diabetic. We had no idea our lives were instantly changed forever. Type 1 Diabetes can be extremely complicated to a casual bystander. Type 1 Diabetes can be deadly if not properly managed and constantly monitored – sometimes as often as every hour.

The nurse issue in the school currently being discussed is much much bigger than just serving diabetic students. The nurses are needed for their professional interpretation and knowledge regarding a much wider medical background than a non-certified person could possibly expect to be fluent in. It would be grossly unfair for anyone else in the school, someone from the front office or a teacher for example, to be expected to provide daily and constant life saving medical support to Type 1 Diabetics and students with other serious medical issues/needs/conditions.

Currently 11% of the population is diabetic. By 2040, those numbers are projected to be at 33%. One in three children born today will have Type 1 diabetes (an autoimmune disease) or Type 2 diabetes (hereditary or lifestyle) in their lifetime.

At the end of the day, each school with a Type 1 Diabetic or with any student who has another medical issues requiring constant monitoring needs to have certified skilled nurse on site to provide immediate assistance.

This isn’t about what the rest of Utah does. This is about Park City and what we should do for our students. Why would we compare ourselves and our services to the rest of Utah – the school district ranking last in dollars per pupil? Let’s compare ourselves to the top school districts in the country – or better yet, set a new standard.