Integrated health plan proposed for schools

Health department says it could alleviate nurse shortage

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer 

Donna Crick no longer needs to worry about the school nurse being absent from Crofton Elementary, where her insulin-dependent daughter attends.

The school no longer shares a nurse with Lacy Elementary School — because Lacy now has a diabetic student as well.  

The Christian County Health Department's initial plan for saving on payroll costs hasn't worked out. So in the midst of serious budget shortfalls, the department is now considering an alternate model, called Coordinated School Health, that would depend more heavily on educators.

"There is so much more that should be done in the schools with school health other than nursing," Health Department Director Mark Pyle wrote in an email. "As a community we will need to figure out how to use all tax dollars (school system, health department, others) to efficiently offer a coordinated school health program."

School nurse sharing raises concerns

By Nick Tabor, New Era Senior Staff Writer

In the last two weeks, since classes started at Crofton Elementary School, Donna Crick has often asked the school nurse in the mornings whether she would be at the school all day.

“She just tells me she’s there until she hears different,” Crick recalled on Friday.

Crick’s 7-year-old daughter Kaylie was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year. When she thinks of Kaylie’s blood sugar dropping so low she falls over or goes into a coma, Crick seizes up with fear. She knows it would take an ambulance a long time to reach Crofton from Hopkinsville.

Lately she’s had trouble sleeping.

When facing a budget shortfall in June, the Christian County Board of Health asked the school system to contribute more funding for nurses. It presented two options for staffing levels based on how much the schools would give.