Elementary School Loses Health Technician to Budget Cuts

January 27, 2010

The health room at New Midway Elementary School will be minus its full-time staff member come Friday afternoon.

Health room technician Marsha Craver is being transferred to Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle School. She will not be replaced at New Midway, a decision that concerns the mother of a student with heart problems.

"I don’t understand how they can do this," parent Tammy Getzandanner said. "We have children who have asthma and use inhalers, and my son has heart problems."

In an effort to combat budget problems, Frederick County government has initiated a hiring freeze.

The resignation of the health room technician at TJ Middle cre ated an opening at a school that had more of a need for a technician than some other schools, Getzandanner said she was told.

"We don’t have enough sick kids with ongoing treatments, apparently," Getzandanner said. "We understand that TJ has children with diabetes and a child who is tube-fed."

While New Midway will not have an on-site, full-time health room technician, its health room will remain open and children will receive the services they need, said Teri O’Gwin-Harris, director of school health for the Frederick County Health Department.

She said it isn’t uncommon for technicians to be transferred from one school to another. New Midway is the fifth school to lose its full-time technician as a result of budget cuts.

New Midway serves students in grades three through five, while sister school Woodsboro Elementary, about a mile away, houses students in pre-kindergarten through second grade. Woodsboro will retain its technician.

Health technicians work under the supervision of a registered nurse, O’Gwin-Harris said. One RN is responsible for New Midway, Woodsboro and Glade Elementary schools.

"The nurse will visit (New Midway) at least once a week," O’Gwin-Harris said. "And all the administrators have her contact information — they can get in touch with her if they need to."

Both O’Gwin-Harris and Christa Williams, health services specialist for Frederick County Public Schools, said school administrators routinely cover the health room when technicians take lunch breaks or miss work.

"Students and parents will see school staff providing services instead of the health room technician with the school nurse providing guidance and direction," Williams wrote in an e-mail to Th e Frederick News-Post.

Health room technicians are certified as nursing assistants and medication technicians. They are needed most to support health rooms performing duties that regular school staff aren’t be qualified to perform, such as catheterizations, blood glucose checks and stomach tube feedings, Williams wrote.

Health rooms with a higher rate of demand for services might see up to 30 students a day and administer multiple daily medications.

To determine where staff members are needed most, "We look at the student population, the health acuity, the number of medicines and the number of treatments," O’Gwin-Harris said.

The decision to move the health tech from New Midway to another school was not made lightly, O’Gwin-Harris said. She said the school nurse will use this week to coordinate operation of the health room in the future.

"She will use this time to make sure that confidence level is there with the administration, with the parents," she said.

Getzandanner said she doesn’t like the way the formula "basically states that some kids are more important than others, that some schools are more important than others."

"It’s easy to say what’s going to happen when you’re not the one who’s going to make it happen," Getzandanner said. "It’s easy to hand down the orders when you’re not the one doing the work. I just don’t see how this is best for the children."