Mat-Su parent asks school board to protect the school nurses her son relies on

Taryn Carpenter asked the Mat-Su Borough School Board on Wednesday to protect school nurses, saying her first-grade son needs trained care every two hours.

Her son has an ileostomy: part of his intestine has been brought through an opening in his abdomen so waste can empty into a bag. She said the school nurse provides that care. "Our school nurse is not a luxury," she said.

Carpenter said that "cutting half of our school nurses and replacing them with uncredentialed health aides in many schools" would have real consequences for students with diabetes, seizure disorders, severe allergies, feeding tubes and other complex medical needs. "Eliminating a nursing position does not eliminate a child's medical needs," she said.

Parents and staff raised similar concerns at a board meeting in September, Alaska News reported. The district has proposed cutting nurse positions to help close a budget deficit. A one-time $1.69 million grant from the Mat-Su Health Foundation, restricted to nurses, holds the district's nurse-to-school ratio steady for a year.

Superintendent Randy Trani told the board later in the meeting that a 13-member regional nurse committee first met Oct. 14 to examine health service delivery models. Its members include three district nurses, a Mat-Su physician, a Mat-Su Health Foundation representative, principals and district administrators. It meets again Dec. 10 and Jan. 4.

Trani said one idea that "made a lot of sense to me" is having people work at the peak level of their license. "If you're the brain surgeon, we probably don't want you spending the bulk of your time bandaging ankles, right?" he said.

He thanked the foundation for giving the district a year to find a model that "will both meet the needs of students and that we can afford."

The Anchorage School District changed how it deploys nurses this school year, pulling nurses from schools with fewer medical needs to cover absences at schools with more complex cases, Alaska News reported in June.