Maintaining our School Cluster Nurses

To the Fulton County School Board:

We, the undersigned, wish to petition you, the Fulton County School Board, to reconsider the proposed cut-back involving the elimination of the eleven licensed, registered Cluster Nurses in the Fulton County School System.

The cluster nurses provide healthcare services to over 80,000 students in 83 schools, and are the only licensed healthcare professionals in the Fulton school system for students in the regular classroom. There can be no substitute for these highly qualified nurses, and removing all or even some of these positions, or even replacing them with less qualified personnel should not be considered.

With the elimination of these cluster nurse positions, who will be qualified and trained to manage the healthcare issues of students with chronic and acute illnesses? Who will work with the families, doctors, school administrators and teaching staff of students with conditions requiring high medical supervision such as diabetes, asthma, seizures, life-threatening allergies, and cancer?

Who will supply the education and resources for the school clinic aides to provide the specialized care required of these students, or provide the school staff with CPR, First Aid and medical emergency response training?

Who will work with the schools in state mandated vision, hearing and scoliosis screenings, address communicable disease issues in the schools, or insure that the immunization requirements for school are met? You?

Our children deserve the right to proper and adequate healthcare in our schools. The motto for the Fulton County School system is Where students come first. Please really put our children first, and maintain the licensed registered Cluster Nurses in our schoolsthey are vital to the well being of all of the children. We need them!