School nurses
School nurses help schools close the achievement gap by providing prevention and wellness services for students. Unfortunately, because schools in California are not required to have school nurses, there were only 2,835 school nurses in California in the 2005-06 school year.1 “School site student support personnel (school nurses, counselors, social workers, psychologists) can provide immediate and early help that may reduce the need (and associated cost) of sending students to outside services.”2 Personnel perform the following services:
- Help disabled students.
- Monitor students with diabetes, asthma, or other chronic health problems.
- Assist students in wheelchairs.
- Store and dispense student medicines.
- Care for injuries.
- Oversee vision, hearing, and other health screenings.
- Counsel students on nutrition and wellness.
- Help teachers deal with rising incidence of autism. As many as 5.5 out of every 1,000 school-age children in the U.S. have been diagnosed with autism, and boys are nearly four times more likely than girls to have the condition.3
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Footnotes
1DataQuest query: State—number of pupil services staff by type, 2005-06
2"Taking Center Stage". Sacramento: California Department of Education, 2001, 207.
3Shankar Vedantam, “300,000 Children in U.S. Found to Have Autism" (Outside Source), Washington Post (May 5, 2006), A09.
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